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PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

THEIR  ORIGIN  AND  MEANING 


RECENT  BOOKS  BY  EDWARD  CjHiP ENTER 


THE  HEALING  OF  NATIONS. 

Crown  8vo.  Cloth  3s.  6d.  net.  Paper  2s.  6d. 
net. 

MY  DAYS  AND  DREAMS:  Autobiogra¬ 
phical 

With  Portraits.  Demy  8vo.  7s.  6d.  net. 

TOWARDS  INDUSTRIAL  FREEDOM. 

Crown  8vo.  Cloth  3s.  6d.  net.  Paper  2s.  6d. 
net. 

GEORGE  ALLEN  &  UNWIN,  LTD. 


PAGAN  &>  CHRIS¬ 
TIAN  CREEDS: 

THEIR  ORIGIN  AND  MEANING 

By  EDWARD  CARPENTER 


LONDON  :  GEORGE  ALLEN  &  UNWIN  LTD. 
RUSKIN  HOUSE,  40  MUSEUM  STREET,  W.C.  1 


First  published  in  IQ20 


(All  tights  reserved) 


“  The  different  religions  being  lame  attempts  to  represent  under 
various  guises  this  one  root-fact  of  the  central  universal  life,  men 
have  at  all  times  clung  to  the  religious  creeds  and  rituals  and  cere- 
*  monials  as  symbolising  in  some  rude  way  the  redemption  and 
fulfilment  of  their  own  most  intimate  natures — and  this  whether 
consciously  understanding  the  interpretations,  or  whether  (as  most 
often )  only  doing  so  in  an  unconscious  or  quite  subconscious  way  ” 

The  Drama  of  Love  and  Death ,  p.  96. 


LO 

CO 


K 

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CO 

CvJ 

Crz 

GE-" 


V 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  INTRODUCTORY  .  ...  9 

II.  SOLAR  MYTHS  AND  CHRISTIAN  FESTIVALS  .  .  1 9 

III.  THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  .  .  .  36 

IV.  TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  .  .  54 

V.  FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC  .  .  .69 

VI.  MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS  .  .  .86 

VII.  RITES  OF  EXPIATION  AND  REDEMPTION  .  .  IOO 

VIII.  PAGAN  INITIATIONS  AND  THE  SECOND  BIRTH  .  II7 

'IX.  MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE  ....  137 

X.  THE  SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  THE  VIRGIN-MOTHER  .  154 

XI.  RITUAL  DANCING  .  .  .  .  *163 

XII.  THE  SEX-TABOO  .....  180 

XIII.  THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  .  .  .  198 

XIV.  THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL  ....  222 

XV.  THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES  ....  239 

XVI.  THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  .  .  .  257 

XVII.  CONCLUSION  ......  2JI 

APPENDIX  ON  THE  TEACHINGS  OF  THE  UPANISHADS  : 

I.  REST  ......  283 

II.  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF  .  .  .  295 

INDEX  ......  309 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS : 

THEIR  ORIGIN  ANI)  MEANING 


I 

INTRODUCTORY 

The  subject  of  Religious  Origins  is  a  fascinating  one,  as 
the  great  multitude  of  books  upon  it,  published  in  late 
years,  tends  to  show.  Indeed  the  great  difficulty  to-day 
in  dealing  with  the  subject,  lies  in  the  very  mass  of  the 
material  to  hand — and  that  not  only  on  account  of  the 
labour  involved  in  sorting  the  material,  but  because  the 
abundance  itself  of  facts  opens  up  temptation  to  a  student 
in  this  department  of  Anthropology  (as  happens  also  in 
other  branches  of  general  Science)  to  rush  in  too  hastily 
with  what  seems  a  plausible  theory.  The  more  facts, 
statistics,  and  so  forth,  there  are  available  in  any  investi¬ 
gation,  the  easier  it  is  to  pick  out  a  considerable  number 
which  will  fit  a  given  theory.  The  other  facts  being 
neglected  or  ignored,  the  views  put  forward  enjoy  for  a 
time  a  great  vogue.  Then  inevitably,  and  at  a  later  time, 
new  or  neglected  facts  alter  the  outlook,  and  a  new 
perspective  is  established. 

There  is  also  in  these  matters  of  Science  (though  many 
scientific  men  would  doubtless  deny  this)  a  great  deal  of 
‘  Fashion  ’.  Such  has  been  notoriously  the  case  in  Poli- 

9 


10 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


tical  Economy,  Medicine,  Geology,  and  even  in  such  definite 
studies  as  Physics  and  Chemistry.  In  a  comparatively 
recent  science,  like  that  with  which  we  are  now  concerned, 
one  would  naturally  expect  variations.  A  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago,  and  since  the  time  of  Rousseau,  the  “  Noble 
Savage  ”  was  extremely  popular  ;  and  he  lingers  still  in 
the  story  books  of  our  children.  Then  the  reaction  from 
this  extreme  view  set  in,  and  of  late  years  it  has  been 
the  popular  cue  (largely,  it  must  be  said,  among  “  arm¬ 
chair  ”  travelers  and  explorers)  to  represent  the  religious 
rites  and  customs  of  primitive  folk  as  a  senseless  mass 
of  superstitions,  and  the  early  man  as  quite  devoid  of 
decent  feeling  and  intelligence.  Again,  when  the  study 
of  religious  origins  first  began  in  modern  times  to  be 
seriously  taken  up — say  in  the  earlier  part  of  last  century 
— there  was  a  great  boom  in  Sungods.  Every  divinity 
in  the  Pantheon  was  an  impersonation  of  the  Sun — unless 
indeed  (if  feminine)  of  the  Moon.  Apollo  was  a  sungod, 
of  course  ;  Hercules  was  a  sungod  ;  Samson  was  a  sun- 
god  ;  Indra  and  Krishna,  and  even  Christ,  the  same. 
C.  F.  Dupuis  in  France  [Origine  de_  tons  les  Cultes,  1795), 
F.  Nork  in  Germany  (. Biblische  Mythologie,  1842),  Richard 
Taylor  in  England  ( The  Devil’s  Pulpit /  1830),  were  among 
the  first  in  modern  times  to  put  forward  this  view.  A 
little  later  the  phallic  explanation  of  everything  came  into 
fashion.  The  deities  were  all  polite  names  for  the  organs 
and  powers  of  procreation.  R.  P.  Knight  ( Ancient  Art 
and  Mythology,  1818)  and  Dr.  Thomas  Inman  {Ancient 
Faiths  and  Ancient  Names,  1868)  popularised  this  idea 
in  England  ;  so  did  Nork  in  Germany.  Then  again  there 
was  a  period  of  what  is  sometimes  called  Euhemerism 

1  This  extraordinary  book,  though  carelessly  composed,  and  con¬ 
taining  many  unproven  statements,  was  on  the  whole  on  the  right 
lines.  But  it  raised  a  storm  of  opposition — the  more  so  because 
its  author  was  a  clergyman  !  He  was  ejected  from  the  ministry, 
of  course,  and  was  sent  to  prison  twice. 


11 


INTRODUCTORY 

— the  theory  that  the  gods  and  goddesses  had  actually 
once  been  men  and  women,  historical  characters  round 
whom  a  halo  of  romance  and  remoteness  had  gathered. 
Later  still,  a  school  has  arisen  which  thinks  little  of  sun- 
gods,  and  pays  more  attention  to  Earth  and  Nature  spirits, 
to  gnomes  and  demons  and  vegetation-sprites,  and  to 
the  processes  of  Magic  by  which  these  (so  it  was  supposed) 
could  be  enlisted  in  man’s  service  if  friendly,  or  exorcised 
if  hostile. 

It  is  easy  to  see  of  course  that  there  is  some  truth  in 
all  these  explanations ;  but  naturally  each  school  for 
the  time  being  makes  the  most  of  its  own  contention. 
Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  ( Pagan  Christs  and  Christianity  and 
Mythology) ,  who  has  done  such  fine  work  in  this  field,1 
relies  chiefly  on  the  solar  and  astronomical  origins,  though 
he  does  not  altogether  deny  the  others  ;  Dr.  Frazer,  on 
the  other  hand — whose  great  work.  The  Golden  Bough, 
is  a  monumental  collection  of  primitive  customs,  and  will 
be  an  inexhaustible  quarry  for  all  future  students — is 
apparently  very  little  concerned  with  theories  about  the 
Sun  and  the  stars,  but  concentrates  his  attention  on  the 
collection  of  innumerable  details  2  of  rites,  chiefly  magical, 
connected  with  food  and  vegetation.  Still  later  writers, 
like  S.  Reinach,  Jane  Harrison  and  E.  A.  Crowley,  being 
mainly  occupied  with  customs  of  very  primitive  peoples, 
like  the  Pelasgian  Greeks  or  the  Australian  aborigines,  have 
confined  themselves  (necessarily)  even  more  to  Magic  and 
Witchcraft. 

Meanwhile  the  Christian  Church  from  these  speculations 
has  kept  itself  severely  apart — as  of  course  representing 
a  unique  and  divine  revelation  little  concerned  or  inter¬ 
ested  in  such  heathenisms  ;  and  moreover  (in  this  country 

1  If  only  he  did  not  waste  so  much  time,  and  so  needlessly,  in 
slaughtering  opponents  ! 

2  To  such  a  degree,  indeed,  that  sometimes  the  connecting  clue  of 
the  argument  seems  to  be  lost. 


12 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


at  any  rate)  has  managed  to  persuade  the  general  public 
of  its  own  divine  uniqueness  to  such  a  degree  that  few 
people,  even  nowadays,  realise  that  it  has  sprung  from  just 
the  same  root  as  Paganism,  and  that  it  shares  by  far  the 
most  part  of  its  doctrines  and  rites  with  the  latter.  Till 
quite  lately  it  was  thought  (in  Britain)  that  only  secularists 
and  unfashionable  people  took  any  interest  in  sungods  ; 
and  while  it  was  true  that  learned  professors  might  point 
to  a  belief  in  Magic  as  one  of  the  first  sources  of  Religion, 
it  was  easy  in  reply  to  say  that  this  obviously  had  nothing 
to  do  with  Christianity !  The  Secularists,  too,  rather 
spoilt  their  case  by  assuming,  in  their  wrath  against  the 
Church,  that  all  priests  since  the  beginning  of  the  world 
have  been  frauds  and  charlatans,  and  that  all  the  rites 
of  religion  were  merely  devil’s  devices  invented  by 
them  for  the  purpose  of  preying  upon  the  superstitions  of 
the  ignorant,  to  their  own  enrichment.  They  (the  Secu¬ 
larists)  overleaped  themselves  by  grossly  exaggerating  a 
thing  that  no  doubt  is  partially  true. 

Thus  the  subject  of  religious  origins  is  somewhat 
complex,  and  yields  many  aspects  for  consideration.  It 
is  only,  I  think,  by  keeping  a  broad  course,  and  admitting 
contributions  to  the  truth  from  various  sides,  that  valu¬ 
able  results  can  be  obtained.  It  is  absurd  to  suppose 
that  in  this  or  any  other  science  neat  systems  can  be  found 
which  will  cover  all  the  facts.  Nature  and  History  do 
not  deal  in  such  things,  or  supply  them  for  a  sop  to  Man’s 
vanity. 

It  is  clear  that  there  have  been  three  main  lines,  so  far, 
along  which  human  speculation  and  study  have  run.  One 
connecting  religious  rites  and  observances  with  the  move¬ 
ments  of  the  Sun  and  the  planets  in  the  sky,  and  leading 
to  the  invention  of  and  belief  in  Olympian  and  remote 
gods  dwelling  in  heaven  and  ruling  the  earth  from  a  dis¬ 
tance  ;  the  second  connecting  religion  with  the  changes 
of  the  season,  on  the  Earth  and  with  such  practical  things 


INTRODUCTORY 


13 


as  the  growth  of  vegetation  and  food,  and  leading  to  or 
mingled  with  a  vague  belief  in  earth-spirits  and  magical 
methods  of  influencing  such  spirits  ;  and  the  third  con¬ 
necting  religion  with  man’s  own  body  and  the  tremendous 
force  of  sex  residing  in  it — emblem  of  undying  life  and  all 
fertility  and  power.  It  is  clear  also — and  all  investigation 
confirms  it — that  the  second-mentioned  phase  of  religion 
arose  on  the  whole  before  the  first-mentioned — that  is, 
that  men  naturally  thought  about  the  very  practical 
questions  of  food  and  vegetation,  and  the  magical  or  other 
methods  of  encouraging  the  same,  before  they  worried 
themselves  about  the  heavenly  bodies  and  the  laws  of 
their  movements,  or  about  the  sinister  or  favorable  influences 
the  stars  might  exert.  And  again  it  is  extremely  probable 
that  the  third-mentioned  aspect — that  which  connected 
religion  with  the  procreative  desires  and  phenomena  of 
human  physiology — really  came  first.  These  desires  and 
physiological  phenomena  must  have  loomed  large  on  the 
primitive  mind  long  before  the  changes  of  the  seasons  or 
of  the  sky  had  been  at  all  definitely  observed  or  con¬ 
sidered.  Thus  we  find  it  probable  that,  in  order  to  under¬ 
stand  the  sequence  of  the  actual  and  historical  phases  of 
religious  worship,  we  must  approximately  reverse  the 
order  above-given  in  which  they  have  been  studied,  and 
conclude  that  in  general  the  Phallic  cults  came  first,  the 
cult  of  Magic  and  the  propitiation  of  earth-divinities  and 
spirits  came  second,  and  only  last  came  the  belief  in  definite 
God-figures  residing  in  heaven. 

At  the  base  of  the  whole  process  by  which  divinities 
and  demons  were  created,  and  rites  for  their  propitiation 
and  placation  established,  lay  Fear — fear  stimulating  the 
imagination  to  fantastic  activity.  Primus  in  orbe  deos 
fecit  Timor.  And  fear,  as  we  shall  see,  only  became  a 
mental  stimulus  at  the  time  of,  or  after,  the  evolution 
of  s<?Z/-consciousness.  Before  that  time,  in  the  period  of 
simple  consciousness,  when  the  human  mind  resembled 


14 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


that  of  the  animals,  fear  indeed  existed,  but  its  nature 
was  more  that  of  a  mechanical  protective  instinct.  There 
being  no  figure  or  image  of  self  in  the  animal  mind,  there 
were  correspondingly  no  figures  or  images  of  beings  who 
might  threaten  or  destroy  that  self.  So  it  was  that  the 
imaginative  power  of  fear  began  with  Self-consciousness, 
and  from  that  imaginative  power  was  unrolled  the  whole 
panorama  of  the  gods  and  rites  and  creeds  of  Religion 
down  the  centuries. 

The  immense  force  and  domination  of  Fear  in  the  first 
self-conscious  stages  of  the  human  mind  is  a  thing  which 
can  hardly  be  exaggerated,  and  which  is  even  difficult 
for  some  of  us  moderns  to  realize.  But  naturally  as  soon 
as  Man  began  to  think  about  himself — a  frail  phantom 
and  waif  in  the  midst  of  tremendous  forces  of  whose  nature 
and  mode  of  operation  he  was  entirely  ignorant — he  was 
beset  with  terrors  ;  dangers  loomed  upon  him  on  all  sides. 
Even  to-day  it  is  noticed  by  doctors  that  one  of  the  chief 
obstacles  to  the  cure  of  illness  among  some  black  or  native 
races  is  sheer  superstitious  terror ;  and  Thanatomania  is 
the  recognised  word  for  a  state  of  mind  ("  obsession  of 
death  ”)  which  will  often  cause  a  savage  to  perish  from  a 
mere  scratch  hardly  to  be  called  a  wound.  The  natural 
defence  against  this  state  of  mind  was  the  creation  of 
an  enormous  number  of  taboos — such  as  we  find  among 
all  races  and  on  every  conceivable  subject — and  these 
taboos  constituted  practically  a  great  body  of  warnings 
which  regulated  the  lives  and  thoughts  of  the  community, 
and  ultimately,  after  they  had  been  weeded  out  and  to 
some  degree  simplified,  hardened  down  into  very  stringent 
Customs  and  Laws.  Such  taboos  naturally  in  the  begin¬ 
ning  tended  to  include  the  avoidance  not  only  of  acts  which 
might  reasonably  be  considered  dangerous,  like  touching 
a  corpse,  but  also  things  much  more  remote  and  fanciful 
in  their  relation  to  danger,  like  merely  looking  at  a  mother- 
in-law,  or  passing  a  lightning-struck  tree  ;  and  (what  is 


INTRODUCTORY 


15 


especially  to  be  noticed)  they  tended  to  include  acts  which 
offered  any  special  pleasure  or  temptation — like  sex  or 
marriage  or  the  enjoyment  of  a  meal.  Taboos  surrounded 
these  things  too,  and  the  psychological  connection  is  easy 
to  divine  :  but  I  shall  deal  with  this  general  subject  later. 

It  may  be  guessed  that  so  complex  a  system  of  regu¬ 
lations  made  life  anything  but  easy  to  early  peoples  ;  but, 
preposterous  and  unreasonable  as  some  of  the  taboos  were, 
they  undoubtedly  had  the  effect  of  compelling  the  growth 
of  self-control.  Fear  does  not  seem  a  very  worthy  motive, 
but  in  the  beginning  it  curbed  the  violence  of  the  purely 
animal  passions,  and  introduced  order  and  restraint  among 
them.  Simultaneously  it  became  itself,  through  the  gradual 
increase  of  knowledge  and  observation,  transmuted  and 
etherialised  into  something  more  like  wonder  and  awe, 
and  (when  the  gods  rose  above  the  horizon)  into  rever¬ 
ence.  Anyhow  we  seem  to  perceive  that  from  the  early 
beginnings  (in  the  Stone  Age)  of  self-consciousness  in 
Man  there  has  been  a  gradual  development — from  crass 
superstition,  senseless  and  accidental,  to  rudimentary 
observation,  and  so  to  belief  in  Magic  ;  thence  to  Animism 
and  personification  of  nature-powers  in  more  or  less  human 
form,  as  earth-divinities  or  sky-gods  or  embodiments  of 
the  tribe  ;  and  to  placation  of  these  powers  by  rites  like 
Sacrifice  and  the  Eucharist,  which  in  their  turn  became 
the  foundation  of  Morality.  Graphic  representations  made 
for  the  encouragement  of  fertility — as  on  the  walls  of 
Bushmen’s  rock-dwellings  or  the  ceilings  of  the  caverns 
of  Altamira — became  the  nurse  of  pictorial  Art  ;  obser¬ 
vations  of  plants  or  of  the  weather  or  the  stars,  carried 
on  by  tribal  medicine-men  for  purposes  of  witchcraft  or 
prophecy,  supplied  some  of  the  material  of  Science  ;  and 
humanity  emerged  by  faltering  and  hesitating  steps  on 
the  borderland  of  those  finer  perceptions  and  reasonings 
which  are  supposed  to  be  characteristic  of  Civilisation. 

The  process  of  the  evolution  of  religious  rites  and  cere- 


16 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


monies  has  in  its  main  outlines  been  the  same  all  over 
the  world,  as  the  reader  will  presently  see — and  this 
whether  in  connexion  with  the  numerous  creeds  of 
Paganism  or  the  supposedly  unique  case  of  Christianity  ; 
and  now  the  continuity  and  close  intermixture  of  these 
great  streams  can  no  longer  be  denied — nor  is  it  indeed 
denied  by  those  who  have  really  studied  the  subject.  It 
is  seen  that  religious  evolution  through  the  ages  has  been 
practically  One  thing — that  there  has  been  in  fact  a  World- 
religion,  though  with  various  phases  and  branches. 

And  so  in  the  present  day  a  new  problem  arises,  namely 
how  to  account  for  the  appearance  of  this  great  Pheno¬ 
menon,  with  its  orderly  phases  of  evolution,  and  its  own 
spontaneous  1  growths  in  all  corners  of  the  globe — this 
phenomenon  which  has  had  such  a  strange  sway  over 
the  hearts  of  men,  which  has  attracted  them  with  so 
weird  a  charm,  which  has  drawn  out  their  devotion,  love 
and  tenderness,  which  has  consoled  them  in  sorrow  and 
affliction,  and  yet  which  has  stained  their  history  with 
such  horrible  sacrifices  and  persecutions  and  cruelties  ? 
What  has  been  the  instigating  cause  of  it  ? 

The  answer  which  I  propose  to  this  question,  and  which 
is  developed  to  some  extent  in  the  following  chapters,  is 
a  psychological  one.  It  is  that  the  phenomenon  proceeds 
from,  and  •  is  a  necessary  accompaniment  of,  the  growth 
of  human  Consciousness  itself — its  growth,  namely,  through 
the  three  great  stages  of  its  unfoldment.  These  stages 
are  (i)  that  of  the  simple  or  animal  consciousness,  (2)  that 
of  Sf?//-consciousness,  and  (3)  that  of  a  third  stage  of  con¬ 
sciousness  which  has  not  as  yet  been  effectively  named, 
but  whose  indications  and  precursive  signs  we  here  and 
there  perceive  in  the  rites  and  prophecies  and  mysteries 
of  the  early  religions,  and  in  the  poetry  and  art  and  liter¬ 
ature  generally  of  the  later  civilisations.  Though  I  do 
not  expect  or  wish  to  catch  Nature  and  History  in  the 

1  For  the  question  of  spontaneity  see  chap,  x  and  elsewhere  infra. 


INTRODUCTORY 


17 


careful  net  of  a  phrase,  yet  I  think  that  in  the  sequence 
from  the  above-mentioned  first  stage  to  the  second,  and 
then  again  in  the  sequence  from  the  second  to  the  third, 
there  will  be  found  a  helpful  explanation  of  the  rites  and 
aspirations  of  human  religion.  It  is  this  idea,  illustrated 
by  details  of  ceremonial  and  so  forth,  which  forms  the 
main  thesis  of  the  present  book.  In  this  sequence  of  growth, 
Christianity  enters  as  an  episode,  but  no  more  than  an 
episode.  It  does  not  amount  to  a  disruption  or  dislo- 
cation  of  evolution.  If  it  did,  or  if  it  stood  as  an  unique 
or  unclassifiable  phenomenon  (as  some  of  its  votaries  con¬ 
tend),  this  would  seem  to  be  a  misfortune — as  it  would 
obviously  rob  us  of  at  any  rate  one  promise  of  progress  in 
the  future.  And  the  promise  of  something  better  than 
Paganism  and  better  than  Christianity  is  very  precious. 
It  is  surely  time  that  it  should  be  fulfilled. 

The  tracing,  therefore,  of  the  part  that  human  self- 
consciousness  has  played,  psychologically,  in  the  evolution 
of  religion,  runs  like  a  thread  through  the  following  chapters, 
and  seeks  illustration  in  a  variety  of  details.  The  idea 
has  been  repeated  under  different  aspects ;  sometimes, 
possibly,  it  has  been  repeated  too  often  ;  but  different 
aspects  in  such  a  case  do  help,  as  in  a  stereoscope,  to  give 
solidity  to  the  thing  seen.  Though  the  worship  of  Sun- 
gods  and  divine  figures  in  the  sky  came  comparatively 
late  in  religious  evolution,  I  have  put  this  subject  early 
in  the  book  (chapters  ii  and  iii),  partly  because  (as  I  have 
already  explained)  it  was  the  phase  first  studied  in  modern 
times,  and  therefore  is  the  one  most  familiar  to  present- 
day  readers,  and  partly  because  its  astronomical  data 
give  great  definiteness  and  ‘  proveability  '  to  it,  in  rebuttal 
to  the  common  accusation  that  the  whole  study  of  religious 
origins  is  too  vague  and  uncertain  to  have  much  value. 
Going  backwards  in  Time,  the  two  next  chapters  (iv  and  v) 
deal  with  Totem-sacraments  and  Magic,  perhaps  the  earliest 

2 


18 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


forms  of  religion.  And  these  four  lead  on  (in  chapters  vi 
to  xi)  to  the  consideration  of  rites  and  creeds  common  to 
Paganism  and  Christianity.  XII  and  xiii  deal  especially 
with  the  evolution  of  Christianity  itself ;  xiv  and  xv  explain 
the  inner  Meaning  of  the  whole  process  from  the  beginning  ; 
and  xvi  and  xvii  look  to  the  Future. 

The  appendix  on  the  doctrines  of  the  Upanishads  may, 
I  hope,  serve  to  give  an  idea,  intimate  even  though  in¬ 
adequate,  of  the  third  Stage — that  which  follows  on  the 
stage  of  self-consciousness  ;  and  to  .portray  the  mental 
attitudes  which  are  characteristic  of  that  stage.  Here  in 
this  third  stage,  it  would  seem,  one  comes  upon  the  real 
facts  of  the  inner  life — in  contradistinction  to  the  fancies 
and  figments  of  the  second  stage  ;  and  so  one  reaches  the 
final  point  of  conjunction  between  Science  and  Religion. 


II 

SOLAR  MYTHS  AND  CHRISTIAN  FESTIVALS 

To  the  ordinary  public — notwithstanding  the  immense 
amount  of  work  which  has  of  late  been  done  on  this 
subject — the  connexion  between  Paganism  and  Christianity 
still  seems  rather  remote.  Indeed  the  common  notion  is 
that  Christianity  was  really  a  miraculous  interposition 
into  and  dislocation  of  the  old  order  of  the  world  ;  and 
that  the  pagan  gods  (as  in  Milton’s  Hymn  on  the  Nativity) 
fled  away  in  dismay  before  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  and  at 
the  sound  of  the  name  of  Jesus.  Doubtless  this  was  a 
view  much  encouraged  by  the  early  Church  itself — if  only 
to  enhance  its  own  authority  and  importance  ;  yet,  as  is 
well  known  to  every  student,  it  is  quite  misleading  and 
contrary  to  fact.  The  main  Christian  doctrines  and  festi¬ 
vals,  besides  a  great  mass  of  affiliated  legend  and  cere¬ 
monial,  are  really  quite  directly  derived  from,  and  related 
to,  preceding  Nature  worships  ;  and  it  has  only  been  by 
a  good  deal  of  deliberate  mystification  and  falsification 
that  this  derivation  has  been  kept  out  of  sight. 

In  these  Nature-worships  there  may  be  discerned  three 
fairly  independent  streams  of  religious  or  quasi-religious 
enthusiasm  :  (i)  that  connected  with  the  phenomena  of 

the  heavens,  the  movements  of  the  Sun,  planets  and  stars, 
and  the  awe  and  wonderment  they  excited  ;  (2)  that  con¬ 
nected  with  the  seasons  and  the  very  important  matter 
of  the  growth  of  vegetation  and  food  on  the  Earth  ;  and 

19 


20 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


(3)  that  connected  with  the  mysteries  of  Sex  and  reproduc¬ 
tion.  It  is  obvious  that  these  three  streams  would  mingle 
and  interfuse  with  each  other  a  good  deal ;  but  as  far  as 
they  were  separable  the  first  would  tend  to  create  Solar 
heroes  and  Sun-myths ;  the  second  Vegetation-gods  and 
personifications  of  Nature  and  the  earth-life  ;  while  the 
third  would  throw  its  glamour  over  the  other  two  and 
contribute  to  the  projection  of  deities  or  daemons  wor¬ 
shipped  with  all  sorts  of  sexual  and  phallic  rites.  All  three 
systems  would  of  course  have  their  special  rites  and  times 
and  ceremonies  ;  but,  as  I  say,  the  rites  and  ceremonies 
of  one  system  would  rarely  be  found  pure  and  unmixed 
with  those  belonging  to  the  two  others.  The  whole  subject 
is  a  very  large  one  ;  but  for  reasons  given  in  the  Intro¬ 
duction  I  shall  in  this  and  the  following  chapter — while 
not  ignoring  phases  (2)  and  (3) — lay  most  stress  on  phase 
(1)  of  the  question  before  us. 

At  the  time  of  the  life  or  recorded  appearance  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  and  for  some  centuries  before,  the  Mediter¬ 
ranean  and  neighbouring  world  had  been  the  scene  of  a 
vast  number  of  pagan  creeds  and  rituals.  There  were 
Temples  without  end  dedicated  to  gods  like  Apollo  or 
Dionysus  among  the  Greeks,  Hercules  among  the  Romans, 
Mithra  among  the  Persians,  Adonis  and  Attis  in  Syria  and 
Phrygia,  Osiris  and  Isis  and  Horus  in  Egypt,  Baal  and 
Astarte  among  the  Babylonians  and  Carthaginians,  and 
so  forth.  Societies,  large  or  small,  united  believers  and  the 
devout  in  the  service  or  ceremonials  connected  with 
their  respective  deities,  and  in  the  creeds  which  they 
confessed  concerning  these  deities.  And  an  extraordin¬ 
arily  interesting  fact,  for  us,  is  that  notwithstanding  great 
geographical  distances  and  racial  differences  between  the 
adherents  of  these  various  cults,  as  well  as  differences  in 
the  details  of  their  services,  the  general  outlines  of  their 
creeds  and  ceremonials  were — if  not  identical — so  markedly 
similar  as  we  find  them. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


21 


I  cannot  of  course  go  at  length  into  these  different  cults, 
but  I  may  say  roughly  that  of  all  or  nearly  all  the  deities 
above-mentioned  it  was  said  and  believed  that  : 

(1)  they  were  bom  on  or  very  near  our  Christmas  Day. 

(2)  They  were  bom  of  a  Virgin-Mother. 

(3)  And  in  a  Cave  or  Underground  Chamber. 

(4)  They  led  a  life  of  toil  for  Mankind. 

(5)  And  were  called  by  the  names  of  Light-bringer, 

Healer,  Mediator,  Saviour,  Deliverer. 

(6)  They  were  however  vanquished  by  the  Powers  of 

Darkness. 

(7)  And  descended  into  Hell  or  the  Underworld. 

(8)  They  rose  again  from  the  dead,  and  became  the 

pioneers  of  mankind  to  the  Heavenly  world. 

(9)  They  founded  Communions  of  Saints,  and  Churches 

into  which  disciples  were  received  by  Baptism. 

(10)  And  they  were  commemorated  by  Eucharistic 

meals. 

Let  me  give  a  few  brief  examples. 

Mithra  was  born  in  a  cave,  and  on  the  25th  December.1 2 
He  was  born  of  a  Virgin.3  He  traveled  far  and  wide  as 
a  teacher  and  illuminator  of  men.  He  slew  the  Bull 
(symbol  of  the  gross  Earth  which  the  sunlight  fructifies). 
His  great  festivals  were  the  winter  solstice  and  the  Spring 
equinox  (Christmas  and  Easter).  He  had  twelve  com¬ 
panions  or  disciples  (the  twelve  months).  He  was  buried 
in  a  tomb,  from  which  however  he  rose  again  ;  and  his 
resurrection  was  celebrated  yearly  with  great  rejoicings. 
He  was  called  Saviour  and  Mediator,  and  sometimes  figured 
as  a  Lamb  ;  and  sacramental  feasts  in  remembrance  of 
him  were  held  by  his  followers.  This  legend  is  apparently 

1  The  birthfeast  of  Mithra  was  held  in  Rome  on  the  8th  day  before 
the  Kalends  of  January,  being  also  the  day  of  the  Circassian  games, 
which  were  sacred  to  the  Sun.  (See  F.  Nork,  Der  Mystagog,  Leipzig.) 

2  This  at  any  rate  was  reported  by  his  later  disciples  (see  Robertson’s 

Pagan  Christs,  p.  338). 


22 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


partly  astronomical  and  partly  vegetational ;  and  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  following  about  Osiris. 

,  *  Osiris  was  born  (Plutarch  tells  us)  on  the  361st  day  of 
the  year,  say  the  27th  December.  He  too,  like  Mithra 
and  Dionysus,  was  a  great  traveler.  As  King  of  Egypt 
he  taught  men  civil  arts,  and  “  tamed  them  by  music 
and  gentleness,  not  by  force  of  arms  ” ;  1  he  was  the  dis¬ 
coverer  of  corn  and  wine.  But  he  was  betrayed  by  Typhon, 
the  power  of  darkness,  and  slain  and  dismembered.  “  This 
happened/'  says  Plutarch,  “  on  the  17th  of  the  month 
Athyr,  when  the  sun  enters  into  the  Scorpion  ”  (the  sign 
of  the  Zodiac  which  indicates  the  oncoming  of  Winter). 
His  body  was  placed  in  a  box,  but  afterwards,  on  the  19th, 
came  again  to  life,  and,  as  in  the  cults  of  Mithra,  Dionysus, 
Adonis  and  others,  so  in  the  cult  of  Osiris,  an  image  placed 
in  a  coffin  was  brought  out  before  the  worshipers  and 
saluted  with  glad  cries  of  ”  Osiris  is  risen.”  1  “  His 

sufferings,  his  death  and  his  resurrection  were  enacted 
year  by  year  in  a  great  mystery-play  at  Abydos.”  z 

The  two  following  legends  have  more  distinctly  the 
character  of  Vegetation  myths. 

Adonis  or  Tammuz,  the  Syrian  god  of  vegetation,  was 
a  very  beautiful  youth,  born  of  a  Virgin  (Nature),  and  so 
beautiful  that  Venus  and  Proserpine  (the  goddesses  of 
the  Upper  and  Underworlds)  both  fell  in  love  with  him. 
To  reconcile  their  claims  it  was  agreed  that  he  should 
spend  half  the  year  (summer)  in  the  upper  world,  and  the 
winter  half  with  Proserpine  below.  He  was  killed  by  a 
boar  (Typhon)  in  the  autumn.  And  every  year  the  maidens 
“  wept  for  Adonis  ”  (see  Ezekiel  viii.  14).  In  the  spring 
a  festival  of  his  resurrection  was  held — the  women  set 
out  to  seek  him,  and  having  found  the  supposed  corpse 
placed  it  (a  wooden  image)  in  a  coffin  or  hollow  tree,  and 
performed  wild  rites  and  lamentations,  followed  by  even 

1  See  Plutarch  on  Isis  and  Osiris. 

2  Ancient  Art  and  Ritual,  by  Jane  E.  Harrison,  chap.  i. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


23 


wilder  rejoicings  over  his  supposed  resurrection.  At 
Apliaca  in  the  North  of  Syria,  and  halfway  between  Byblus 
and  Baalbec,  there  was  a  famous  grove  and  temple  of 
Astarte,  near  which  was  a  wild  romantic  gorge  full  of  trees, 
the  birthplace  of  a  certain  river  Adonis — the  water  rushing 
from  a  Cavern,  under  lofty  cliffs.  Here  (it  wras  said)  every 
year  the  youth  Adonis  was  again  wounded  to  death,  and 
the  river  ran  red  with  his  blood,1  while  the  scarlet  anemone 
bloomed  among  the  cedars  and  the  walnuts. 

The  story  of  Attis  is  very  similar.  He  was  a  fair  young 
shepherd  or  herdsman  of  Phrygia,  beloved  by  Cybele  (or 
Demeter),  the  Mother  of  the  gods.  He  was  born  of  a  Virgin 
— Nana — who  conceived  by  putting  a  ripe  almond  or 
pomegranate  in  her  bosom.  He  died,  either  killed  by  a 
boar,  the  symbol  of  winter,  like  Adonis,  or  self-castrated 
(like  his  own  priests)  ;  and  he  bled  to  death  at  the  foot 
of  a  pine  tree  (the  pine  and  pine-cone  being  symbols  of 
fertility).  The  sacrifice  of  his  blood  renewed  the  fertility 
of  the  earth,  and  in  the  ritual  celebration  of  his  death 
and  resurrection  his  image  was  fastened  to  the  trunk  of 
a  pine-tree  (compare  the  Crucifixion).  But  I  shall  return 
to  this  legend  presently.  The  worship  of  Attis  became 
very  widespread  and  much  honoured,  and  was  ultimately 
incorporated  with  the  established  religion  at  Rome  some¬ 
where  about  the  commencement  of  our  Era. 

The  following  two  legends  (dealing  with  Hercules  and 
with  Krishna)  have  rather  more  of  the  character  of  the 
solar,  and  less  of  the  vegetational  myth  about  them.  Both 
heroes  were  regarded  as  great  benefactors  of  humanity ; 
but  the  former  more  on  the  material  plane,  and  the  latter 
on  the  spiritual. 

Hercules  or  Heracles  was,  like  other  Sun-gods  and  bene- 

1  A  discoloration  caused  by  red  earth  washed  by  rain  from  the 
mountains,  and  which  has  been  observed  by  modern  travelers.  For 
the  whole  story  of  Adonis  and  of  Attis  see  Frazer’s  Golden  Bough, 
part  iv. 


24 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


factors  of  mankind,  a  great  Traveler.  He  was  known  in 
many  lands,  and  everywhere  he  was  invoked  as  Saviour. 

He  was  miraculously  conceived  from  a  divine  Father ; 
even  in  the  cradle  he  strangled  two  serpents  sent  to  destroy 
him.  His  many  labours  for  the  good  of  the  world  were 
ultimately  epitomised  into  twelve,  symbolised  by  the 
signs  of  the  Zodiac.  He  slew  the  Nemsean  Lion  and  the 
Hydra  (offspring  of  Typhon)  and  the  Boar.  He  overcame 
the  Cretan  Bull,  and  cleaned  out  the  Stables  of  Augeas  ; 
he  conquered  Death  and,  descending  into  Hades,  brought 
Cerberus  thence  and  ascended  into  Heaven.  On  all  sides 
he  was  followed  by  the  gratitude  and  the  prayers  of  mortals. 

As  to  Krishna,  the  Indian  god,  the  points  of  agreement 
with  the  general  divine  career  indicated  above  are  too 
salient  to  be  overlooked,  and  too  numerous  to  be  fully 
recorded.  He  also  was  born  of  a  Virgin  (Devaki)  and  in 
a  Cave,1  and  his  birth  announced  by  a  Star.  It  was  sought 
to  destroy  him,  and  for  that  purpose  a  massacre  of  infants 

* 

was  ordered.  Everywhere  he  performed  miracles,  raising 
the  dead,  healing  lepers,  and  the  deaf  and  the  blind,  and 
championing  the  poor  and  oppressed.  He  had  a  beloved 
disciple,  Arjuna,  (cf.  John)  before  whom  he  was  trans¬ 
figured.2  His  death  is  differently  related — as  being  shot 
by  an  arrow,  or  crucified  on  a  tree.  He  descended  into 
hell ;  and  rose  again  from  the  dead,  ascending  into  heaven 
in  the  sight  of  many  people.  He  will  return  at  the  last 
day  to  be  the  judge  of  the  quick  and  the  dead. 

Such  are  some  of  the  legends  concerning  the  pagan  and 
pre-Christian  deities — only  briefly  sketched  now,  in  order 
that  we  may  get  something  like  a  true  perspective  of  the 
whole  subject  ;  but  to  most  of  them,  and  more  in  detail, 

m 

I  shall  return  as  the  argument  proceeds. 

What  we  chiefly  notice  so  far  are  two  points  ;  on  the 
one  hand  the  general  similarity  of  these  stories  with  that 

1  Cox’s  Myths  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  p.  107. 

2  Bhagavat  Gita,  ch.  xi. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


25 


of  Jesus  Christ ;  on  the  other  their  analogy  with  the  yearly 
phenomena  of  Nature  as  illustrated  by  the  course  of  the 
Sun  in  heaven  and  the  changes  of  Vegetation  on  the  earth. 

(i)  The  similarity  of  these  ancient  pagan  legends  and 
beliefs  with  Christian  traditions  wras  indeed  so  great  that 
it  excited  the  attention  and  the  undisguised  wrath  of  the 
early  Christian  fathers.  They  felt  no  doubt  about  the 
similarity,  but  not  knowing  how  to  explain  it  fell  back 
upon  the  innocent  theory  that  the  Devil — in  order  to 
confound  the  Christians — had,  centuries  before,  caused  the 
pagans  to  adopt  certain  beliefs  and  practices  !  (Very 
crafty,  we  may  say,  of  the  Devil,  but  also  very  innocent 
of  the  Fathers  to  believe  it  !)  Justin  Martyr  for  instance 
describes  1  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as  narrated 
in  the  Gospels,  and  then  goes  on  to  say  :  “  Which  the 
wicked  devils  have  imitated  in  the  mysteries  of  Mithra, 
commanding  the  same  thing  to  be  done.  For,  that  bread 
and  a  cup  of  water  are  placed  with  certain  incantations 
in  the  mystic  rites  of  one  who  is  being  initiated  you  either 
know  or  can  learn."  Tertullian  also  says  2 3  that  “  the  devil 
by  the  mysteries  of  his  idols  imitates  even  the  main  part 
of  the  divine  mysteries."  .  .  .  “  He  baptises  his  wor¬ 
shippers  in  water  and  makes  them  believe  that  this  purifies 
them  from  their  crimes."  .  .  .  “  Mithra  sets  his  mark 
on  the  forehead  of  his  soldiers  ;  he  celebrates  the  oblation 
of  bread  ;  he  offers  an  image  of  the  resurrection,  and  presents 
at  once  the  crown  and  the  sword  ;  he  limits  his  chief  priest 
to  a  single  marriage  ;  he  even  has  his  virgins  and  ascetics."  3 
Cortez,  too,  it  will  be  remembered  complained  that  the 
Devil  had  positively  taught  to  the  Mexicans  the  same 
things  which  God  had  taught  to  Christendom. 

1  i  Apol.  c.  66. 

2  De  Prcescriptione  Hereticorum,  c.  40  ;  De  Bapt.  c.  3  ;  De  Corona, 

c.  15. 

3  For  reference  to  both  these  examples  see  J.  M.  Robertson’s  Pagan 
Christs,  pp.  321,  322. 


26 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Justin  Martyr  again,  in  the  Dialogue  with  Trypho  says 
that  the  Birth  in  the  Stable  was  the  prototype  (!)  of  the 
birth  of  Mithra  in  the  Cave  of  Zoroastrianism  ;  and  boasts 
that  Christ  was  born  when  the  Sun  takes^  its  birth  in  the 
Augean  Stable,1  coming  as  a  second  Hercules  to  cleanse 
a  foul  world ;  and  St.  Augustine  says  “  we  hold  this 
(Christmas)  day  holy,  not  like  the  pagans  because  of  the 
birth  of  the  Sun,  but  because  of  the  birth  of  him  who  made 
it.”  There  are  plenty  of  other  instances  in  the  Early 
Fathers  of  their  indignant  ascription  of  these  similarities 

iM-nn.uH Tp!  mil  I » JH  M II  im  — ,JLU'J">  «n-»n»  "  r - — -  - - * 

to  the  work  of  devils  ;  but  we  need  not  dwell  over  them. 
There  is  no  need  for  us  to  be  indignant.  On  the  contrary 
we  can  now  see  that  these  animadversions  of  the  Christian 
writers  are  the  evidence  of  how  and  to  what  extent  in  the 
spread  of  Christianity  over  the  world  it  had  become  fused 
with  the  Pagan  cults  previously  existing. 

It  was  not  till  the  year  a.d.  530  or  so — five  centuries 
after  the  supposed  birth  of  Christ — that  a  Scythian  Monk, 
Dionysius  Exiguus,  an  abbot  and  astronomer  of  Rome, 
was  commissioned  to  fix  the  day  and  the  year  of  that  birth. 
A  nice  problem,  considering  the  historical  science  of  the 
period  !  For  year  he  assigned  the  date  which  we  now 
adopt,2  and  for  day  and  month  he  adopted  the  25th  Dec¬ 
ember — a  date  which  had  been  in  popular  use  since  about 
350  b.c.,  and  the  very  date,  within  a  day  or  two,  of  the 
supposed  birth  of  the  previous  Sungods.3  From  that 

1  The  Zodiacal  sign  of  Capvicovnus,  see  infra  (iii.  49). 

2  See  Encycl.  Brit.  art.  “  Chronology.” 

3  “  There  is  however  a  difficulty  in  accepting  the  25th  December 
as  the  real  date  of  the  Nativity,  December  being  the  height  of  the 
rainy  season  in  Judaea,  when  neither  flocks  nor  shepherds  could  have 
been  at  night  in  the  fields  of  Bethlehem  ”  (!).  Encycl.  Brit.  art. 
“  Christmas  Day.”  According  to  Hastings’s  Encyclopedia,  art. 
“  Christmas,”  “  Usener  says  that  the  Feast  of  the  Nativity  was  held 
originally  on  the  6th  January  (the  Epiphany),  but  in  353-4  the  Pope 
Liberius  displaced  it  to  the  25th  December  .  .  .  but  there  is  no 
evidence  of  a  Feast  of  the  Nativity  taking  place  at  all,  before  the 
fourth  century  a.d.”  It  was  not  till  534  a.d.  that  Christmas  Day 
and  Epiphany  were  reckoned  by  the  law-courts  as  dies  non. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


27 


fact  alone  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  by  the  year  530 
or  earlier  the  existing  Nature-worships  had  become  largely 
fused  into  Christianity.  In  fact  the  dates  of  the  main 
pagan  religious  festivals  had  by  that  time  become  so 
popular  that  Christianity  was  obliged  to  accommodate  itself 
to  them.1 

This  brings  us  to  the  second  point  mentioned  a  few 
pages  back — the  analogy  between  the  Christian  festivals 
and  the  yearly  phenomena  of  Nature  in  the  Sun  and  the 
Vegetation. 

Let  us  take  Christmas  Day  first.  Mithra,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  reported  to  have  been  born  on  the  25th  December 
(which  in  the  Julian  Calendar  was  reckoned  as  the  day 
of  the  Winter  Solstice  and  of  the  Nativity  of  the  Sun)  ; 
Plutarch  says  (Isis  and  Osiris,  c.  12)  that  Osiris  was  born 
on  the  361st  day  of  the  year,  when  a  Voice  rang  out  pro¬ 
claiming  him  Lord  of  All.  Horns,  he  says,  was  born  on 
the  362nd  day.  Apollo  on  the  same. 

Why  was  all  this  ?  Why  did  the  Druids  at  Yule  Tide 
light  roaring  fires  ?  Why  was  the  cock  supposed  to  crow 
all  Christmas  Eve  ("  The  bird  of  dawning  singeth  all  night 
long  ”)  ?  Why  was  Apollo  bom  with  only  one  hair  (the 
young  Sun  with  only  one  feeble  ray)  ?  Why  did  Samson 
(name  derived  from  Shemesh,  the  sun)  lose  all  his  strength 
when  he  lost  his  hair  ?  Why  were  so  many  of  these  gods 
— Mithra,  Apollo,  Krishna,  Jesus,  and  others,  born  in 
caves  or  underground  chambers  ?  3  Why,  at  the  Easter 

1  As,  for  instance,  the  festival  of  John  the  Baptist  in  June  took 
the  place  of  the  pagan  midsummer  festival  of  water  and  bathing  ; 
the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  in  August  the  place  of  that  of  Diana 
in  the  same  month  ;  and  the  festival  of  All  Souls  early  in  November, 
that  of  the  world-wide  pagan  feasts  of  the  dead  and  their  ghosts  at 
the  same  season. 

2  This  same  legend  of  gods  (or  idols)  being  born  in  caves  has, 
curiously  enough,  been  reported  from  Mexico,  Guatemala,  the  Antilles, 
and  other  places  in  Central  America.  See  C.  F.  P.  von  Martius, 
Ethnographie  Amerika,  etc.  (Leipzig,  1867),  vol.  i,  p.  758. 


28 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Eve  festival  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem  is  a  light 
brought  from  the  grave  and  communicated  to  the  candles 
of  thousands  who  wait  outside,  and  who  rush  forth  rejoicing 
to  carry  the  new  glory  over  the  world  ?  1  Why  indeed  ? 
except  that  older  than  all  history  and  all  written  records 
has  been  the  fear  and  wonderment  of  the  children  of  men 
over  the  failure  of  the  Sun's  strength  in  Autumn — the 
decay  of  their  God  ;  and  the  anxiety  lest  by  any  means 
he  should  not  revive  or  reappear  ? 

Think  for  a  moment  of  a  time  far  back  when  there  were 
absolutely  no  Almanacs  or  Calendars,  either  nicely  printed 
or  otherwise,  when  all  that  timid  mortals  could  see  was 
that  their  great  source  of  Light  and  Warmth  was  daily 
failing,  daily  sinking  lower  in  the  sky.  As  everyone  now 
knows  there  are  about  three  weeks  at  the  fag  end  of  the 
year  when  the  days  are  at  their  shortest  and  there  is  very 
little  change.  What  was  happening  ?  Evidently  the  god 
had  fallen  upon  evil  times.  Typhon,  the  prince  of  dark¬ 
ness,  had  betrayed  him  ;  Delilah,  the  queen  of  Night,  had 
shorn  his  hair ;  the  dreadful  Boar  had  wounded  him ; 
Hercules  was  struggling  with  Death  itself  ;  he  had  fallen 
under  the  influence  of  those  malign  constellations — the 
Serpent  and  the  Scorpion.  Would  the  god  grow  weaker 
and  weaker,  and  finally  succumb,  or  would  he  conquer 
after  all  ?  We  can  imagine  the  anxiety  with  which  those 
early  men  and  women  watched  for  the  first  indication  of 
a  lengthening  day  ;  and  the  universal  joy  when  the  Priest 
(the  representative  of  primitive  science)  having  made  some 
simple  observations,  announced  from  the  Temple  steps 
that  the  day  was  lengthening — that  the  Sun  was  really  born 
again  to  a  new  and  glorious  career.2 

1  Compare  the  Aztec  ceremonial  of  lighting  a  holy  fire  and  com¬ 
municating  it  to  the  multitude  from  the  wounded  breast  of  a  human 
victim,  celebrated  every  52  years  at  the  end  of  one  cycle  and  the 
beginning  of  another — the  constellation  of  the  Pleiades  being  in 
the  Zenith  (Prescott’s  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Bk.  I,  ch.  4). 

2  It  was  such  things  as  these  which  doubtless  gave  the  Priesthood 
its  power. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


29 


Let  us  look  at  the  elementary  science  of  those  days  a 
little  closer.  How  without  Almanacs  or  Calendars  could 
the  day,  or  probable  day,  of  the  Sun's  rebirth  be  fixed  ? 
Go  out  next  Christmas  Evening,  and  at  midnight  you  will 
see  the  brightest  of  the  fixed  stars,  Sirius,  blazing  in  the 
southern  sky — not  however  due  south  from  you,  but  some¬ 
what  to  the  left  of  the  Meridian  line.  Some  three  thousand 
years  ago  (owing  to  the  Precession  of  the  Equinoxes)  that 
star  at  the  winter  solstice  did  not  stand  at  midnight  where 
you  now  see  it,  but  almost  exactly  on  the  meridian  line. 
The  coming  of  Sirius  therefore  to  the  meridian  at  midnight 
became  the  sign  and  assurance  of  the  Sun  having  reached 
the  very  lowest  point  of  his  course,  and  therefore  of  having 
arrived  at  the  moment  of  his  re-birth.  Where  then  was 
the  Sun  at  that  moment  ?  Obviously  in  the  underworld 
beneath  our  feet.  Whatever  views  the  ancients  may 
have  had  about  the  shape  of  the  earth,  it  was  evident  to 
the  mass  of  people  that  the  Sungod,  after  illuminating  the 
world  during  the  day,  plunged  down  in  the  West,  and 
remained  during  the  hours  of  darkness  in  some  cavern 
under  the  earth.  Here  he  rested  and  after  bathing  in  the 
great  ocean  renewed  his  garments  before  reappearing  in 
the  East  next  morning. 

But  in  this  long  night  of  his  greatest  winter  weakness, 
when  all  the  world  was  hoping  and  praying  for  the  renewal 
of  his  strength,  it  is  evident  that  the  new  birth  would  come 
— if  it  came  at  all — at  midnight.  This  then  was  the  sacred 
hour  when  in  the  underworld  (the  Stable  or  the  Cave  or 
whatever  it  might  be  called)  the  child  was  born  who  was 
destined  to  be  the  Saviour  of  men.  At  that  moment  Sirius 
stood  on  the  southern  meridian  (and  in  more  southern 
lands  than  ours  this  would  be  more  nearly  overhead)  ; 
and  that  star — there  is  little  doubt — is  the  Star  in  the  East 
mentioned  in  the  Gospels. 

To  the  right,  as  the  supposed  observer  looks  at  Sirius 
on  the  midnight  of  Christmas  Eve,  stands  the  magnificent 


30 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Orion,  the  mighty  hunter.  There  are  three  stars  in  his 
belt  which,  as  is  well  known,  lie  in  a  straight  line  pointing 
to  Sirius.  They  are  not  so  bright  as  Sirius,  but  they  are 
sufficiently  bright  to  attract  attention.  A  long  tradition 
gives  them  the  name  of  the  Three  Kings.  Dupuis  1  says  : 
“  Orion  a  trois  belles  etoiles  vers  le  milieu,  qui  sont  de 
seconde  grandeur  et  posees  en  ligne  droite,  Tune  pres  de 
Tautre,  le  peuple  les  appelle  les  trots  rots.  On  donne  aux 
trois  rois  Magis  les  noms  de  Magalat,  Galgalat,  Saraim  ; 
et  Athos,  Satos,  Paratoras.  Les  Catholiques  les  appellent 
Gaspard,  Melchior,  et  Balthasar.”  The  last -mentioned 
group  of  names  comes  in  the  Catholic  Calendar  in  con¬ 
nexion  with  the  feast  of  the  Epiphany  (6th  January)  ; 
and  the  name  “  Trois  Rois  ”  is  commonly  to-day  given 
to  these  stars  by  the  French  and  Swiss  peasants. 

Immediately  after  Midnight  then,  on  the  25th  December, 
the  Beloved  Son  (or  Sun-god)  is  born.  If  we  go  back  in 
thought  to  the  period,  some  three  thousand  years  ago, 
when  at  that  moment  of  the  heavenly  birth  Sirius,  coming 
from  the  East,  did  actually  stand  on  the  Meridian,  we 
shall  come  into  touch  with  another  curious  astronomical 
coincidence.  For  at  that  same  moment  we  shall  see  the 
Zodiacal  constellation  of  the  Virgin  in  the  act  of  rising, 
and  becoming  visible  in  the  East  divided  through  the 
middle  by  the  line  of  the  horizon. 

The  constellation  Virgo  is  a  Y-shaped  group,  of  which 
a,  the  star  at  the  foot,  is  the  well-known  Spica,  a  star  of 
the  first  magnitude.  The  other  principal  stars,  y  at  the 
centre,  and  jS  and  e  at  the  extremities,  are  of  the  second 
magnitude.  The  whole  resembles  more  a  cup  than  the 
human  figure  ;  but  when  we  remember  the  symbolic  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  cup,  that  seems  to  be  an  obvious  explanation 
of  the  name  Virgo,  which  the  constellation  has  borne  since 

1  Charles  F.  Dupuis  ( Origine  de  Tous  les  Cultes,  Paris,  1822)  was 
one  of  the  earliest  modern  writers  on  these  subjects. 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


31 


the  earliest  times.  [The  three  stars  j3,  y  and  a,  lie  very 
nearly  on  the  Ecliptic,  that  is,  the  Sun’s  path — a  fact  to 
which  we  shall  return  presently.] 

At  the  moment  then  when  Sirius,  the  star  from  the  East, 
by  coming  to  the  Meridian  a^  midnight  signalled  the  Sun’s 
new  birth,  the  Virgin  was  seen  just  rising  on  the  Eastern 
sky — the  horizon  line  passing  through  her  centre.  And 
many  people  think  that  this  astronomical  fact  is  the  explan¬ 
ation  of  the  very  widespread  legend  of  the  Virgin-birth.  I 


<< 


do  not  think  that  it  is  the  sole  explanation— for  indeed  in 
all  or  nearly  all  these  cases  the  acceptance  of  a  myth  seems 
to  depend  not  upon  a  single  argument  but  upon  the  con¬ 
vergence  of  a  number  of  meanings  and  reasons  in  the  same 
symbol.  But  certainly  the  fact  mentioned  above  is  curious, 
and  its  importance  is  accentuated  by  the  following  con¬ 
siderations. 

In  the  Temple  of  Denderah  in  Egypt,  and  on  the  inside 
of  the  dome,  there  is  or  was  an  elaborate  circular  repre¬ 
sentation  of  the  Northern  hemisphere  of  the  sky  and  the 


32 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Zodiac.1  Here  Virgo  the  constellation  is  represented,  as 
in  our  star-maps,  by  a  woman  with  a  spike  of  corn  in  her 
hand  (Spica).  But  on  the  margin  close  by  there  is  an 
annotating  and  explicatory  figure — a  figure  of  Isis  with 
the  infant  Horus  in  her  arms,  and  quite  resembling  in 
style  the  Christian  Madonna  and  Child,  except  that  she 
is  sitting  and  the  child  is  on  her  knee.  This  seems  to  show 
that — whatever  other  nations  may  have  done  in  associ¬ 
ating  Virgo  with  Demeter,  Ceres,  Diana,2 3  etc. — the  Egyptians 
made  no  doubt  of  the  constellation's  connexion  with  Isis 
and  Horus.  But  it  is  well  known  as  a  matter  of  history 
that  the  worship  of  Isis  and  Horus  descended  in  the  early 
Christian  centuries  to  Alexandria,  where  it  took  the  form 
of  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mary  and  the  infant  Saviour, 
and  so  passed  into  the  European  ceremonial.  We  have 
therefore  the  Virgin  Mary  connected  by  linear  succession 
and  descent  with  that  remote  Zodiacal  cluster  in  the  sky  ! 
Also  it  may  be  mentioned  that  on  the  Arabian  and  Persian 
globes  of  Abenezra  and  Abuazar  a  Virgin  and  Child  are 
figured  in  connexion  with  the  same  constellation. 3 

A  curious  confirmation  of  the  same  astronomical  con¬ 
nexion  is  afforded  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Calendar.  For 
if  this  be  consulted  it  will  be  found  that  the  festival  of  the 
Assumption  of  the  Virgin  is  placed  on  the  15th  August, 
while  the  festival  of  the  Birth  of  the  Virgin  is  dated  the 
8th  September.  I  have  already  pointed  out  that  the 
stars,  a,  /3  and  y  of  Virgo  are  almost  exactly  on  the  Ecliptic, 
or  Sun's  path  through  the  sky  ;  and  a  brief  reference  to 
the  Zodiacal  signs  and  the  star-maps  will  show  that  the 
Sun  each  year  enters  the  sign  of  Virgo  about  the  first-men¬ 
tioned  date,  and  leaves  it  about  the  second  date.  At  the 
present  day  the  Zodiacal  signs  (owing  to  precession)  have 

1  Carefully  described  and  mapped  by  Dupuis,  see  op.  cit. 

2  For  the  harvest-festival  of  Diana,  the  Virgin,  and  her  parallelism 
with  the  Virgin  Mary,  see  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  i,  14  and  ii,  12 1. 

3  See  F.  Nork,  Dev  Mystagog  (Leipzig,  1838). 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


33 


shifted  some  distance  from  the  constellations  of  the  same 
name.  But  at  the  time  when  the  Zodiac  was  constituted 
and  these  names  were  given,  the  first  date  obviously  would 
signalise  the  actual  disappearance  of  the  cluster  Virgo 
in  the  Sun's  rays — i.e.  the  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  into 
the  glory  of  the  God — while  the  second  date  would  signalise 
the  reappearance  of  the  constellation  or  the  Birth  of  the 
Virgin.  The  Church  of  Notre  Dame  at  Paris  is  supposed 
to  be  on  the  original  site  of  a  Temple  of  Isis;  and  it  is 
said  (but  I  have  not  been  able  to  verify  this  myself)  that 
one  of  the  side  entrances — that,  namely,  on  the  left  in 
entering  from  the  North  (cloister)  side — is  figured  with 
the  signs  of  the  Zodiac  except  that  the  sign  Virgo  is  replaced 
by  the  figure  of  the  Madonna  and  Child. 

So  strange  is  the  scripture  of  the  sky  !  Innumerable 
legends  and  customs  connect  the  rebirth  of  the  Sun  with 
a  Virgin  parturition.  Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer  in  his  Part  IV 
of  The  Golden  Bough  1  says  :  “If  we  may  trust  the  evidence 
of  an  obscure  scholiast  the  Greeks  [in  the  worship  of 
Mithras  at  Rome]  used  to  celebrate  the  birth  of  the  lumin¬ 
ary  by  a  midnight  service,  coming  out  of  the  inner  shrines 
and  crying,  ‘  The  Virgin  has  brought  forth !  The  light 
is  waxing  !  ’  (fH  TrapOlvoQ  tetokev,  av^ei  (jiCog-)”  In 
Elie  Reclus’  little  book  Primitive  Folk  3  it  is  said  of  the 
Esquimaux  that  “  On  the  longest  night  of  the  year  two 
angakout  (priests),  of  whom  one  is  disguised  as  a  woman, 
go  from  hut  to  hut  extinguishing  all  the  lights,  rekindling 
them  from  a  vestal  flame,  and  crying  out,  ‘  From  the  new 
sun  cometh  a  new  light  \  ” 

All  this  above-written  on  the  Solar  or  Astronomical 
origins  of  the  myths  does  not  of  course  imply  that  the 
Vegetational  origins  must  be  denied  or  ignored.  These 
latter  were  doubtless  the  earliest,  but  there  is  no  reason 
— as  said  in  the  Introduction  (ch.  i) — why  the  two  elements 

1  Book  II,  ch.  vi. 

3  In  the  Contemporary  Science  Series,  p.  92. 

3 


34 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


should  not  to  some  extent  have  run  side  by  side,  or  been 
fused  with  each  other.  In  fact  it  is  quite  clear  that  they 
must  have  done  so  ;  and  to  separate  them  out  too  rigidly, 
or  treat  them  as  antagonistic,  is  a  mistake.  The  Cave  or 
Underworld  in  which  the  New  Year  is  born  is  not  only 
the  place  of  the  Sun's  winter  retirement,  but  also  the  hidden 
chamber  beneath  the  Earth  to  which  the  dying  Vegetation 
goes,  and  from  which  it  re-arises  in  Spring.  The  amours 
of  Adonis  with  Venus  and  Proserpine,  the  lovely  goddesses 
of  the  upper  and  under  worlds,  or  of  Attis  with  Cybele, 
the  blooming  Earth-mother,  are  obvious  vegetation-symbols  ; 
but  they  do  not  exclude  the  interpretation  that  Adonis 
(Adonai)  may  also  figure  as  a  Sun-god.  The  Zodiacal 
constellations  of  Aries  and  Taurus  (to  which  I  shall  return 
presently)  rule  in  heaven  just  when  the  Lamb  and  the 
Bull  are  in  evidence  on  the  earth  ;  and  the  yearly  sacrifice 
of  those  two  animals  and  of  the  growing  Corn  for  the  good 
of  mankind  runs  parallel  with  the  drama  of  the  sky,  as 
it  affects  not  only  the  said  constellations  but  also  Virgo 
(the  Earth-mother  who  bears  the  sheaf  of  corn  in  her 
hand). 

I  shall  therefore  continue  (in  the  next  chapter)  to  point 
out  these  astronomical  references — which  are  full  of  signi¬ 
ficance  and  poetry  ;  but  with  a  recommendation  at  the 
same  time  to  the  reader  not  to  forget  the  poetry  and  signi¬ 
ficance  of  the  terrestrial  interpretations. 

Between  Christmas  Day  and  Easter  there  are  several 
minor  festivals  or  holy  days — such  as  the  28th  December 
(the  Massacre  of  the  Innocents),  the  6th  January  (the 
Epiphany),  the  2nd  February  (Candlemas 1  Day),  the 
period  of  Lent  (German  Lenz,  the  Spring),  the  Annunci- 

1  This  festival  of  the  Purification  of  the  Virgin  corresponds  with 
the  old  Roman  festival  of  Juno  Februata  (i.e.  purified)  which  was 
held  in  the  last  month  (February)  of  the  Roman  year,  and  which 
included  a  candle  procession  of  Ceres,  searching  for  Proserpine.  (F. 
Nork,  Der  Mystagog.) 


SOLAR  MYTHS 


35 


ation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  so  forth — which  have 
been  commonly  celebrated  in  the  pagan  cults  before  Chris¬ 
tianity,  and  in  which  elements  of  Star  and  Nature  worship 
can  be  traced  ;  but  to  dwell  on  all  these  would  take  too 
long ;  so  let  us  pass  at  once  to  the  period  of  Easter  itself. 


Ill 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC 

The  Vernal  Equinox  has  all  over  the  ancient  world,  and 
from  the  earliest  times,  been  a  period  of  rejoicing  and  of 
festivals  in  honour  of  the  Sungod.  It  is  needless  to  labour 
a  point  which  is  so  well  known.  Everyone  understands 
and  appreciates  the  joy  of  finding  that  the  long  darkness 
is  giving  way,  that  the  Sun  is  growing  in  strength,  and 
that  the  days  are  winning  a  victory  over  the  nights.  The 
birds  and  flowers  reappear,  and  the  promise  of  Spring  is 
in  the  air.  But  it  may  be  worth  while  to  give  an  elemen¬ 
tary  explanation  of  the  astronomical  meaning  of  this  period, 
because  this  is  not  always  understood,  and  yet  it  is  very 
important  in  its  bearing  on  the  rites  and  creeds  of  the 
early  religions.  The  priests  who  were,  as  I  have  said, 
the  early  students  and  inquirers,  had  worked  out  this 
astronomical  side,  and  in  that  way  were  able  to  fix  dates 
and  to  frame  for  the  benefit  of  the  populace  myths  and 
legends,  which  were  in  a  certain  sense  explanations  of  the 
order  of  Nature,  and  a  kind  of  “  popular  science.” 

The  Equator,  as  everyone  knows,  is  an  imaginary  line 
or  circle  girdling  the  Earth  half-way  between  the  North 
and  South  poles.  If  you  imagine  a  transparent  Earth 
with  a  light  at  its  very  centre,  and  also  imagine  the  shadow 
of  this  equatorial  line  to  be  thrown  on  the  vast  concave 
of  the  Sky,  this  shadow  would  in  astronomical  parlance 

36 


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38  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

coincide  with  the  Equator  of  the  Sky — forming  an  imaginary 
circle  half-way  between  the  North  and  South  celestial  poles. 

The  Equator,  then,  may  be  pictured  as  cutting  across 
the  sky  either  by  day  or  by  night,  and  always  at  the  same 
elevation — that  is,  as  seen  from  any  one  place.  But  the 
Ecliptic  (the  other  important  great  circle  of  the  heavens) 
can  only  be  thought  of  as  a  line  traversing  the  constel¬ 
lations  as  they  are  seen  at  night.  It  is  in  fact  the  Sun's 
path  among  the  fixed  stars.  For  (really  owing  to  the 
Earth’s  motion  in  its  orbit)  the  Sun  appears  to  move  round 
the  heavens  once  a  year — traveling,  always  to  the  left, 
from  constellation  to  constellation.  The  exact  path  of 
the  sun  is  called  the  Ecliptic  ;  and  the  band  of  sky  on 
either  side  of  the  Ecliptic  which  may  be  supposed  to  include 
the  said  constellations  is  called  the  Zodiac.  How  then — 
it  will  of  course  be  asked — seeing  that  the  Sun  and  the  Stars 
can  never  be  seen  together — were  the  Priests  able  to  map 
out  the  path  of  the  former  among  the  latter  ?  Into  that 
question  we  need  not  go.  Sufficient  to  say  that  they 
succeeded  ;  and  their  success — even  with  the  very  primitive 
instruments  they  had — shows  that  their  astronomical 
knowledge  and  acuteness  of  reasoning  were  of  no  mean 
order. 

To  return  to  our  Vernal  Equinox.  Let  us  suppose  that 
the  Equator  and  Ecliptic  of  the  sky,  at  the  Spring  season, 
are  represented  by  the  two  lines  Eq.  and  Eel.  crossing  each 
other  at  the  point  P.  The  Sun,  represented  by  the  small 
circle,  is  moving  slowly  and  in  its  annual  course  along  the 
Ecliptic  to  the  left.  When  it  reaches  the  point  P  (the 
dotted  circle)  it  stands  on  the  Equator  of  the  sky,  and 
then  for  a  day  or  two,  being  neither  North  nor  South,  it 
shines  on  the  two  terrestrial  hemispheres  alike,  and  day 
and  night  are  equal.  Before  that  time,  when  the  sun  is 
low  down  in  the  heavens,  night  has  the  advantage,  and  the 
days  are  short ;  afterwards,  when  the  Sun  has  traveled 
more  to  the  left,  the  days  triumph  over  the  nights. 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  39 


It  will  be  seen  then  that  this  point  P  where  the  Sun’s 
path  crosses  the  Equator  is  a  very  critical  point.  It  is 
the  astronomical  location  of  the  triumph  of  the  Sungod 
and  of  the  arrival  of  Spring. 

How  was  this  location  defined  ?  Among  what  stars 
was  the  Sun  moving  at  that  critical  moment  ?  (For  of 
course  it  was  understood,  or  supposed,  that  the  Sun  was 
deeply  influenced  by  the  constellation  through  which  it 
was,  or  appeared  to  be,  moving.)  It  seems  then  that  at 
the  period  when  these  questions  were  occupying  men’s 
minds — say  about  three  thousand  years  ago — the  point 
where  the  Ecliptic  crossed  the  Equator  was,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  in  the  region  of  the  constellation  Aries  or  the  he- 


Lamb.  The  triumph  of  the  Sungod  was  therefore,  and 
quite  naturally,  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  Aries.  The 
Lamb  became  the  symbol  of  the  risen  Saviour,  and  of  his  passage 
from  the  underworld  into  the  height  of  heaven.  At  first  such 
an  explanation  sounds  hazardous  ;  but  a  thousand  texts 
and  references  confirm  it  ;  and  it  is  only  by  the  accumu¬ 
lation  of  evidence  in  these  cases  that  the  student  becomes 
convinced  of  a  theory’s  correctness.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  (what  I  have  mentioned  before)  that  these 
myths  and  legends  were  commonly  adopted  not  only  for 
one  strict  reason  but  because  they  represented  in  a  general 
way  the  convergence  of  various  symbols  and  inferences. 

Let  me  enumerate  a  few  points  with  regard  to  the  Vernal 
Equinox.  In  the  Bible  the  festival  is  called  the  Pass- 


40 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


over,  and  its  supposed  institution  by  Moses  is  related  in 
Exodus,  ch.  xii.  In  every  house  a  he-lamb  was  to  be 
slain,  and  its  blood  to  be  sprinkled  on  the  doorposts  of 
the  house.  Then  the  Lord  would  pass  over  and  not  smite 
that  house.  The  Hebrew  word  is  pasach,  to  pass.1  The 
lamb  slain  was  called  the  Paschal  Lamb.  But  what  was 
that  lamb  ?  Evidently  not  an  earthly  lamb — (though 
certainly  the  earthly  lambs  on  the  hillsides  were  just  then 
ready  to  be  killed  and  eaten) — but  the  heavenly  Lamb, 
which  was  slain  or  sacrificed  when  the  Lord  *  passed  over  * 
the  equator  and  obliterated  the  constellation  Aries.  This 
was  the  Lamb  of  God  which  was  slain  each  year,  and  “  slain 
since  the  foundation  of  the  world.”  This  period  of  the 
Passover  (about  the  25th  March)  was  to  be  2 3  the  beginning 
of  a  new  year.  The  sacrifice  of  the  Lamb,  and  its  blood, 
were  to  be  the  promise  of  redemption.  The  door-frames 
of  the  houses — symbols  of  the  entrance  into  a  new  life — 
were  to  be  sprinkled  with  blood.3  Later,  the  imagery  of 
the  saving  power  of  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  became  more 
popular,  more  highly  coloured.  (See  St.  Paul’s  epistles, 
and  the  early  Fathers.)  And  we  have  the  expression 
“  washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  ”  adopted  into  the 
Christian  Church. 

In  order  fully  to  understand  this  extraordinary  expression 
and  its  origin  we  must  turn  for  a  moment  to  the  worship 

1  It  is  said  that  pasach  sometimes  means  not  so  much  to  pass  over, 
as  to  hover  over  and  so  protect.  Possibly  both  meanings  enter  in 
here.  See  Isaiah  xxxi.  5. 

=  See  Exodus  xii.  1. 

3  It  is  even  said  (see  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  iii,  185)  that  the 
doorways  of  houses  and  temples  in  Peru  were  at  the  Spring  festival 
daubed  with  blood  of  the  first-born  children — commuted  afterwards 
to  the  blood  of  the  sacred  animal,  the  Llama.  And  as  to  Mexico, 
Sahagun,  the  great  Spanish  missionary,  tells  us  that  it  was  a  custom 
of  the  people  there  to  “  smear  the  outside  of  their  houses  and  doors 
with  blood  drawn  from  their  own  ears  and  ankles,  in  order  to  pro¬ 
pitiate  the  god  of  Harvest”  (Kingsborough’s  Mexican  Antiquities, 
vol.  vi,  p.  235). 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  41 


both  of  Mithra,  the  Persian  Sungod,  and  of  Attis  the  Syrian 
god,  as  throwing  great  light  on  the  Christian  cult  and 
ceremonies.  It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  early 
centuries  of  our  era  the  Mithra-cult  was  spread  over  the 
whole  Western  world.  It  has  left  many  monuments  of 
itself  even  here  in  Britain.  At  Rome  the  woiship  was 
extremely  popular,  and  it  may  almost  be  said  to  have 
been  a  matter  of  chance  whether  Mithraism  should  over¬ 
whelm  Christianity,  or  whether  the  younger  religion  by 
adopting  many  of  the  rites  of  the  older  one  should  establish 
itself  (as  it  did)  in  the  face  of  the  latter. 

Now  we  have  already  mentioned  that  in  the  Mithra 
cult  the  slaying  of  a  Bull  by  the  Sungod  occupies  the  same 
sort  of  place  as  the  slaying  of  the  Lamb  in  the  Christian 
cult.  It  took  place  at  the  Vernal  Equinox  and  the  blood 
of  the  Bull  acquired  in  men’s  minds  a  magic  virtue. 
Mithraism  was  a  greatly  older  religion  than  Christianity  ; 
but  its  genesis  was  similar.  In  fact,  owing  to  the  Pre¬ 
cession  of  the  Equinoxes,  the  crossing-place  of  the  Ecliptic 
and  Equator  was  different  at  the  time  of  the  establishment 
of  Mithra-worship  from  what  it  was  in  the  Christian  period  ; 
and  the  Sun  instead  of  standing  in  the  He-lamb,  or  Aries , 
at  the  Vernal  Equinox  stood,  about  two  thousand  years 
earlier  (as  indicated  by  the  dotted  line  in  the  diagram, 
p.  39),  in  this  very  constellation  of  the  Bull.1  The  bull 
therefore  became  the  symbol  of  the  triumphant  God,  and 
the  sacrifice  of  the  bull  a  holy  mystery.  (Nor  must  we 

1  With  regard  to  this  point,  see  an  article  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
for  September  1900,  by  E.  W.  Maunder  of  the  Greenwich  Observatory 
on  “The  Oldest  Picture  Book"  (the  Zodiac).  Mr.  Maunder  calcu¬ 
lates  that  the  Vernal  Equinox  was  in  the  centre  of  the  Sign  of  the 
Bull  5,000  years  ago.  [It  would  therefore  be  in  the  centre  of  Aries 
2,845  years  ago — allowing  2,155  years  for  the  time  occupied  in  passing 
from  one  Sign  to  another.]  At  the  earlier  period  the  Summer  solstice 
was  in  the  centre  of  Leo,  the  Autumnal  equinox  in  the  centre  of 
Scorpio,  and  the  Winter  solstice  in  the  centre  of  Aquarius — corre- 
pondingly  roughly,  Mr.  Maunder  points  out,  to  the  positions  of  the 
four  *  Royal  Stars,’  Aldebaran,  Regulus,  Antares  and  Fomalhaut. 


42 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


overlook  here  the  agricultural  appropriateness  of  the  bull 
as  the  emblem  of  Spring-plowings  and  of  service  to  man.) 

The  sacrifice  of  the  Bull  became  the  image  of  redemption. 
In  a  certain  well-known  Mithra-sculpture  or  group,  the 
Sungod  is  represented  as  plunging  his  dagger  into  a  bull, 
while  a  scorpion,  a  serpent,  and  other  animals  are  sucking 
the  latter’s  blood.  From  one  point  of  view  this  may  be 
taken  as  symbolic  of  the  Sun  fertilising  the  gross  Earth 
by  plunging  his  rays  into  it  and  so  drawing  forth  its  blood 
for  the  sustenance  of  all  creatures  ;  while  from  another 
more  astronomical  aspect  it  symbolises  the  conquest  of 
the  Sun  over  winter  in  the  moment  of  *  passing  over  ’  the 
sign  of  the  Bull,  and  the  depletion  of  the  generative  power 
of  the  Bull  by  the  Scorpion — which  of  course  is  the  autum¬ 
nal  sign  of  the  Zodiac  and  herald  of  winter.  One  such 
Mithraic  group  was  found  at  Ostia,  where  there  was  a  large 
subterranean  Temple  “  to  the  invincible  god  Mithras.” 

In  the  worship  of  Attis  there  were  (as  I  have  already 
indicated)  many  points  of  resemblance  to  the  Christian 
cult.  On  the  22nd  March  (the  Vernal  Equinox)  a  pine- 
tree  was  cut  in  the  woods  and  brought  into  the  Temple 
of  Cybele.  It  was  treated  almost  as  a  divinity,  was  decked 
with  violets,  and  the  effigy  of  a  young  man  tied  to  the 
stem  (cf.  the  Crucifixion).  The  24th  was  called  the  “  Day 
of  Blood  ”  ;  the  High  Priest  first  drew  blood  from  his  own 
arms  ;  and  then  the  others  gashed  and  slashed  themselves, 
and  spattered  the  altar  and  the  sacred  tree  with  blood  ; 
while  novices  made  themselves  eunuchs  “  for  the  kingdom 
of  heaven’s  sake.”  The  effigy  was  afterwards  laid  in  a 
tomb.  But  when  night  fell,  says  Dr.  Frazer,1  sorrow  was 
turned  to  joy.  A  light  was  brought,  and  the  tomb  was 
found  to  be  empty.  The  next  day,  the  25th,  was  the 
festival  of  the  Resurrection  ;  and  ended  in  carnival  and 
license  (the  Hilaria).  Further,  says  Dr.  Frazer,  these 

1  See  Adonis,  Attis  and  Osiris,  Part  IV  of  The  Golden  Bough,  by 
J.  G.  Frazer,  p.  229. 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  43 


mysteries  “  seem  to  have  included  a  sacramental  meal 
and  a  baptism  of  blood.” 

“  In  the  baptism  the  devotee,  crowned  with  gold  and 
wreathed  with  fillets,  descended  into  a  pit,  the  mouth  of 
which  was  covered  with  a  wooden  grating.  A  bull,  adorned 
with  garlands  of  flowers,  its  forehead  glittering  with  gold 
leaf,  was  then  driven  on  to  the  grating  and  there  stabbed 
to  death  with  a  consecrated  spear.  Its  hot  reeking  blood 
poured  in  torrents  through  the  apertures,  and  was  received 
with  devout  eagerness  by  the  worshiper  on  every  part  of 
his  person  and  garments,  till  he  emerged  from  the  pit, 
drenched,  dripping,  and  scarlet  from  head  to  foot,  to 
receive  the  homage,  nay  the  adoration,  of  his  fellows — as 
one  who  had  been  born  again  to  eternal  life  and  had  washed 
away  his  sins  in  the  blood  of  the  bull.”  1  And  Frazer 
continuing  says  :  “  That  the  bath  of  blood  derived  from 
slaughter  of  the  bull  (tauro-bolium)  was  believed  to  regen¬ 
erate  the  devotee  for  eternity  is  proved  by  an  inscription 
found  at  Rome,  which  records  that  a  certain  Sextilius 
Agesilaus  Aedesius,  who  dedicated  an  altar  to  Attis  and 
the  mother  of  the  gods  (Cybele)  was  taarobolio  criobolio  que 
in  aeternum  renatus .”  3  “In  the  procedure  of  the  Tauro- 
bolia  and  Criobolia,”  says  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson, 3  “  which 
grew  very  popular  in  the  Roman  world,  we  have  the  literal 
and  original  meaning  of  the  phrase  ‘  washed  in  the  blood 
of  the  lamb  * ;  the  doctrine  being  that  resurrection  and 
eternal  life  were  secured  by  drenching  or  sprinkling  with 
the  actual  blood  of  a  sacrificial  bull  or  ram.”  For  the 
popularity  of  the  rite  we  may  quote  Franz  Cumont,  who 
says  4  : — “  Cette  douche  sacree  ( taurobolium )  parait  avoir 
ete  administree  en  Cappadoce  dans  un  grand  nombre  de 

1  Adonis,  Attis  and  Osiris,  p.  229.  References  to  Prudentius,  and 
to  Firmicus  Maternus,  De  errore  28.  8. 

2  That  is,  “  By  the  slaughter  of  the  bull  and  the  slaughter  of  the  ram 
born  again  into  eternity 

3  Pagan  Christs,  p.  315. 

4  Mystdres  de  Mithra,  Bruxelles,  1902,  p.  153. 


44 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


sanctuaires,  et  en  particulier  dans  ceux  de  Ma  la  grande 
divinite  indigene,  et  dans  ceux  de  Anahit  a.” 

Whether  Mr.  Robertson  is  right  in  ascribing  to  the 
priests  (as  he  appears  to  do)  so  materialistic  a  view  of  the 
potency  of  the  actual  blood  is,  I  should  say,  doubtful.  I 
do  not  myself  see  that  there  is  any  reason  for  supposing 
that  the  priests  of  Mithra  or  Attis  regarded  baptism  by 
blood  very  differently  from  the  way  in  which  the  Christian 
Church  has  generally  regarded  baptism  by  water — namely, 
as  a  symbol  of  some  inner  regeneration.  There  may  cer¬ 
tainly  have  been  a  little  more  of  the  magical  view  and  a 
little  less  of  the  symbolic,  in  the  older  religions  ;  but  the 
difference  was  probably  on  the  whole  more  one  of  degree 
than  of  essential  disparity.  But  however  that  may  be, 
we  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  extraordinary  analogy 
between  the  tombstone  inscriptions  of  that  period  "  born 
again  into  eternity  by  the  blood  of  the  Bull  or  the  Ram,” 
and  the  corresponding  texts  in  our  graveyards  to-day. 
F.  Cumont  in  his  elaborate  work,  Textes  et  Monuments 
relatifs  aux  Mysteres  de  Mithra  (2  vols.,  Brussels,  1899) 
gives  a  great  number  of  texts  and  epitaphs  of  the  same 
character  as  that  above-quoted,1  and  they  are  well  worth 
studying  by  those  interested  in  the  subject.  Cumont,  it 
may  be  noted  (vol.  i,  p.  305);  thinks  that  the  story  of  Mithra 
and  the  slaying  of  the  Bull  must  have  originated  among 
some  pastoral  people  to  whom  the  bull  was  the  source  of 
all  life.  The  Bull  in  heaven — the  symbol  of  the  trium¬ 
phant  Sungod — and  the  earthly  bull,  sacrificed  for  the 
good  of  humanity  were  one  and  the  same  ;  the  god,  in 
fact,  sacrificed  himself  or  his  representative.  And  Mithra 
was  the  hero  who  first  won  this  conception  of  divinity 
for  mankind — though  of  course  it  is  in  essence  quite  similar 
to  the  conception  put  forward  by  the  Christian  Church. 

As  illustrating  the  belief  that  the  Baptism  by  Blood 
was  accompanied  by  a  leal  regeneration  of  the  devotee, 

1  See  vol.  i,  pp.  334  fp. 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  45 


Frazer  quotes  an  ancient  writer  1  who  says  that  for  some 
time  after  the  ceremony  the  fiction  of  a  new  birth  was 
kept  up  by  dieting  the  devotee  on  milk,  like  a  new-born 
babe.  And  it  is  interesting  in  that  connexion  to  find 
that  even  in  the  present  day  a  diet  of  absolutely  nothing 
but  milk  for  six  or  eight  weeks  is  by  many  doctors  recom¬ 
mended  as  the  only  means  of  getting  rid  of  deep-seated 
illnesses  and  enabling  a  patient’s  organism  to  make  a 
completely  new  start  in  life. 

“  At  Rome,”  he  further  says  (p.  230),  “  the  new  birth 
and  the  remission  of  sins  by  the  shedding  of  bull’s  blood 
appear  to  have  been  carried  out  above  all  at  the  sanctuary 
of  the  Phrygian  Goddess  (Cybele)  on  the  Vatican  Hill, 
at  or  near  the  spot  where  the  great  basilica  of  St.  Peter’s 
now  stands  ;  for  many  inscriptions  relating  to  the  rites 
were  found  when  the  church  was  being  enlarged  in  1608 
or  1609.  From  the  Vatican  as  a  centre,”  he  continues, 
“  this  barbarous  system  of  superstition  seems  to  have 
spread  to  other  parts  of  the  Roman  empire.  Inscriptions 
found  in  Gaul  and  Germany  prove  that  provincial  sanc¬ 
tuaries  modelled  their  ritual  on  that  of  the  Vatican.” 

It  would  appear  then  that  at  Rome  in  the  quite  early 
days  of  the  Christian  Church,  the  rites  and  ceremonials 
of  Mithra  and  Cybele,  probably  much  intermingled  and 
blended,  were  exceedingly  popular.  Both  religions  had 
been  recognised  by  the  Roman  State,  and  the  Christians, 
persecuted  and  despised  as  they  were,  found  it  hard  to 
make  any  headway  against  them — the  more  so  perhaps 
because  the  Christian  doctrines  appeared  in  many  respects 
to  be  merely  faint  replicas  and  copies  of  the  older  creeds. 
Robertson  maintains 3  that  a  he-lamb  was  sacrificed  in 
the  Mithraic  mysteries,  and  he  quotes  Porphyry  as  saying  3 
that  “  a  place  near  the  equinoctial  circle  was  assigned  to 
Mithra  as  an  appropriate  seat  ;  and  on  this  account  he 

1  Sallustius  philosophus.  See  Adonis,  Attis  and  Osiris,  note,  p.  229. 

3  Pagan  Christs,  p.  336.  3  Da  Antro,  xxiv. 


46 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


bears  the  sword  of  the  Ram  [Aries]  which  is  a  sign  of  Mars 
[Ares]/’  Similarly  among  the  early  Christians,  it  is  said, 
a  ram  or  lamb  was  sacrificed  in  the  Paschal  mystery. 

Many  people  think  that  the  association  of  the  Lamb- 
god  with  the  Cross  arose  from  the  fact  that  the  constel¬ 
lation  Aries  at  that  time  was  on  the  heavenly  cross  (the 
crossways  of  the  Ecliptic  and  Equator — see  diagram, 
ch.  iii,  p.  39  supra),  and  in  the  very  place  through  which 
the  Sungod  had  to  pass  just  before  his  final  triumph.  And 
it  is  curious  to  find  that  Justin  Martyr  in  his  Dialogue 
with  Trypho  1  (a  Jew)  alludes  to  an  old  Jewish  practice  of 
roasting  a  Lamb  on  spits  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  Cross. 
“  The  lamb,”  he  says,  meaning  apparently  the  Paschal 
lamb,  “  is  roasted  and  dressed  up  in  the  form  of  a  cross. 
For  one  spit  is  transfixed  right  through  the  lower  parts 
up  to  the  head,  and  one  across  the  back,  to  which  are 
attached  the  legs  [forelegs]  of  the  lamb.” 

To-day  in  Morocco  at  the  festival  of  Eid-el-Kebir,  corre¬ 
sponding  to  the  Christian  Easter,  the  Mohammedans  sacrifice 
a  young  ram  and  hurry  it  still  bleeding  to  the  precincts 
of  the  Mosque,  while  at  the  same  time  every  household 
slays  a  lamb,  as  in  the  Biblical  institution,  for  its  family 
feast. 

But  it  will  perhaps  be  said,  *  You  are  going  too  fast 
and  proving  too  much.  In  the  anxiety  to  show  that 
the  Lamb-god  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  Lamb  were  honoured 
by  the  devotees  of  Mithra  and  Cybele  in  the  Rome  of  the 
Christian  era,  you  are  forgetting  that  the  sacrifice  of  the 
Bull  and  the  baptism  in  bull’s  blood  were  the  salient 
features  of  the  Persian  and  Phrygian  ceremonials  some 
centuries  earlier.  How  can  you  reconcile  the  existence 
side  by  side  of  divinities  belonging  to  such  different  periods, 
or  ascribe  them  both  to  an  astronomical  origin  ?  ”  The 
answer  is  simple  enough.  As  I  have  explained  before, 

1  Ch.  xl. 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC 


47 


the  Precession  of  the  Equinoxes  caused  the  Sun,  at  its 
moment  of  triumph  over  the  powers  of  darkness,  to  stand 
at  one  period  in  the  constellation  of  the  Bull,  and  at  a 
period  some  two  thousand  years  later  in  the  constellation 
of  the  Ram.  It  was  perfectly  natural  therefore  that  a 
change  in  the  sacred  symbols  should,  in  the  course  of  time, 
take  place  ;  yet  perfectly  natural  also  that  these  symbols, 
having  once  been  consecrated  and  adopted,  should  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  honoured  and  clung  to  long  after  the  time  of 
their  astionomical  appropriateness  had  passed,  and  so 
to  be  found  side  by  side  in  later  centuries.  The  devotee 
of  Mithra  or  Attis  on  the  Vatican  Hill  at  Rome  in  the  year 
200  a.d.  probably  had  as  little  notion  or  comprehension  of 
the  real  origin  of  the  sacred  Bull  or  Ram  which  he  adored, 
as  the  Christian  in  St.  Peter’s  to-day  has  of  the  origin  of 
the  Lamb-god  whose  vicegerent  on  earth  is  the  Pope. 

It  is  indeed  easy  to  imagine  that  the  change  from  the 
worship  of  the  Bull  to  the  worship  of  the  Lamb  which 
undoubtedly  took  place  among  various  peoples  as  time 
went  on,  was  only  a  ritual  change  initiated  by  the  priests 
in  order  to  put  on  record  and  harmonise  with  the  astrono¬ 
mical  alteration.  Anyhow  it  is  curious  that  while  Mithra 
in  the  early  times  was  specially  associated  with  the  bull, 
his  association  with  the  lamb  belonged  more  to  the  Roman 
period.  Somewhat  the  same  happened  in  the  case  of 
Attis.  In  the  Bible  we  read  of  the  indignation  of  Moses 
at  the  setting  up  by  the  Israelites  of  a  Golden  Calf,  after 
the  sacrifice  of  the  ram-lamb  had  been  instituted — as  if 
indeed  the  rebellious  people  were  returning  to  the  earlier 
cult  of  Apis  which  they  ought  to  have  left  behind  them 
in  Egypt.  In  Egypt  itself,  too,  we  find  the  worship  of 
Apis,  as  time  went  on,  yielding  place  to  that  of  the  Ram¬ 
headed  god  Amun,  or  Jupiter  Ammon.1  So  that  both 

1  Tacitus  (Hist.  v.  4)  speaks  of  a  ram-sacrifice  by  the  Jew9  in 
honour  of  Jupiter  Ammon.  See  also  Herodotus  (ii.  42)  on  the  same 
in  Egypt. 


48 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


from  the  Bible  and  from  Egyptian  history  we  may  con¬ 
clude  that  the  worship  of  the  Lamb  or  Ram  succeeded 
to  the  worship  of  the  Bull. 

Finally  it  has  been  pointed  out,  and  there  may  be  some 
real  connexion  in  the  coincidence,  that  in  the  quite  early 
years  of  Christianity  the  Fish  came  in  as  an  accepted  symbol 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Considering  that  after  the  domination 
of  Taurus  and  Aries,  the  Fish  ( Pisces )  comes  next  in  suc¬ 
cession  as  the  Zodiacal  sign  for  the  Vernal  Equinox,  and 
is  now  the  constellation  in  which  the  Sun  stands  at  that 
period,  it  seems  not  impossible  that  the  astronomical  change 
has  been  the  cause  of  the  adoption  of  this  new  symbol. 

Anyhow,  and  allowing  for  possible  errors  or  exagger¬ 
ations,  it  becomes  clear  that  the  travels  of  the  Sun  through 
the  belt  of  constellations  which  forms  the  Zodiac  must 
have  had,  from  earliest  times,  a  profound  influence  on 
the  generation  of  religious  myths  and  legends.  To  say 
that  it  was  the  only  influence  would  certainly  be  a  mistake. 
Other  causes  undoubtedly  contributed.  But  it  was  a 
main  and  important  influence.  The  origins  of  the  Zodiac 
are  obscure  ;  we  do  not  know  with  any  certainty  the  reasons 
why  the  various  names  were  given  to  its  component  sections, 
nor  can  we  measure  the  exact  antiquity  of  these  names  ; 
but — pre-supposing  the  names  of  the  signs  as  once  given 
— it  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the  growth  of  legends  con¬ 
nected  with  the  Sun’s  course  among  them. 

Of  all  the  ancient  divinities  perhaps  Hercules  is  the  one 
whose  role  as  a  Sungod  is  most  generally  admitted.  The 
helper  of  gods  and  men,  a  mighty  Traveler,  and  invoked 
everywhere  as  the  Saviour,  his  labours  for  the  good  of  the 
world  became  ultimately  defined  and  systematised  as 
twelve  and  corresponding  in  number  to  the  signs  of  the 
Zodiac.  It  is  true  that  this  systematisation  only  took 
place  at  a  late  period,  probably  in  Alexandria  ;  also  that 
the  identification  of  some  of  the  Labours  with  the  actual 
signs  as  we  have  them  at  present  is  not  always  clear.  But 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  49 


considering  the  wide  prevalence  of  the  Hercules  myth 
over  the  ancient  world  and  the  very  various  astronomical 
systems  it  must  have  been  connected  with  in  its  origin, 
this  lack  of  exact  correspondence  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at. 

The  Labours  of  Hercules  which  chiefly  interest  us  are  : 
(i)  The  capture  of  the  Bull,  (2)  the  slaughter  of  the  Lion, 
(3)  the  destruction  of  the  Hydra,  (4)  of  the  Boar,  (5)  the 
cleansing  of  the  stables  of  Augeas,  (6)  the  descent  into 
Hades  and  the  taming  of  Cerberus.  The  first  of  these  is 
in  line  with  the  Mithraic  conquest  of  the  Bull ;  the  Lion  is 
of  course  one  of  the  most  prominent  constellations  of  the 
Zodiac,  and  its  conquest  is  obviously  the  work  of  a  Saviour 
of  mankind ;  while  the  last  four  labours  connect  them¬ 
selves  very  naturally  with  the  Solar  conflict  in  winter 
against  the  powers  of  darkness.  The  Boar  (4)  we  have 
seen  already  as  the  image  of  Typhon,  the  prince  of  dark¬ 
ness  ;  the  Hydra  (3)  was  said  to  be  the  offspring  of  Typhon  ; 
the  descent  into  Hades  (6) — generally  associated  with 
Hercules’  struggle  with  and  victory  over  Death— links 
on  to  the  descent  of  the  Sun  into  the  underworld,  and  its 
long  and  doubtful  strife  with  the  forces  of  winter  ;  and 
the  cleansing  of  the  stables  of  Augeas  (5)  has  the  same 
signification.  It  appears  in  fact  that  the  stables  of  Augeas 
was  another  name  for  the  sign  of  Capricorn  through  which 
the  Sun  passes  at  the  Winter  solstice  1 — the  stable  of 
course  being  an  underground  chamber — and  the  myth 
was  that  there,  in  this  lowest  tract  and  backwater  of  the 
Ecliptic  all  the  malarious  and  evil  influences  of  the  sky 
were  collected,  and  the  Sungod  came  to  wash  them  away 
(December  was  the  height  of  the  rainy  season  in  Judsea) 
and  cleanse  the  year  towards  its  rebirth. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  too  that  even  as  a  child  in 
the  cradle  Hercules  slew  two  serpents  sent  for  his  destruc¬ 
tion — the  serpent  and  the  scorpion  as  autumnal  constel¬ 
lations  figuring  always  as  enemies  of  the  Sungod — to  which 

1  See  diagram  of  Zodiac,  supra,  p.  37. 

4 


50 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


may  be  compared  the  power  given  to  his  disciples  by 
Jesus  1  “  to  tread  on  serpents  and  scorpions."  Hercules 
also  as  a  Sungod  compares  curiously  with  Samson  (men¬ 
tioned  above,  ii,  p.  27),  but  we  need  not  dwell  on  all  the 
elaborate  analogies  that  have  been  traced  2  between  these 
two  heroes. 

The  Jesus-story,  it  will  now  be  seen,  has  a  great  number 
of  correspondences  with  the  stories  of  former  Sungods 
and  with  the  actual  career  of  the  Sun  through  the  heavens 
— so  many  indeed  that  they  cannot  well  be  attributed  to 
mere  coincidence  or  even  to  the  blasphemous  wiles  of  the 
Devil !  Let  us  enumerate  some  of  these.  There  are 
(1)  the  birth  from  a  Virgin  mother  ;  (2)  the  birth  in  a  stable 
(cave  or  underground  chamber)  ;  and  (3)  on  the  25th 
December  (just  after  the  winter  solstice).  There  is  (4) 
the  Star  in  the  East  (Sirius)  and  (5)  the  arrival  of  the  Magi 
(the  “  Three  Kings  ”)  ;  there  is  (6)  the  threatened  Massacre 
of  the  Innocents,  and  the  consequent  flight  into  a  distant 
country  (told  also  of  Krishna  and  other  Sungods).  There 
are  the  Church  festivals  of  (7)  Candlemas  (2nd  February), 
with  processions  of  candles  to  symbolise  the  growing 
light ;  of  (8)  Lent,  or  the  arrival  of  Spring  ;  of  (9)  Easter  | 
Day  (normally  oh  the  25th  March)  to  celebrate  the  crossing 
of  the  Equator  by  the  Sun  ;  and  (10)  simultaneously  the 
outburst  of  lights  at  the  Holy  Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem. 
There  is  (11)  the  Crucifixion  and  death  of  the  Lamb-God, 
on  Good  Friday,  three  days  before  Easter  ;  there  are  (12)  , 
the  nailing  to  a  tree,  (13)  the  empty  grave,  (14)  the  glad 
Resurrection  (as  in  the  cases  of  Osiris,  Attis  and  others)  ; 
there  are  (15)  the  twelve  disciples  (the  Zodiacal  signs)  ; 
and  (16)  the  betrayal  by  one  of  the  twelve.  Then  later 
there  is  (17)  Midsummer  Day,  the  24th  June,  dedicated 
to  the  birth  of  the  beloved  disciple  John,  and  corresponding 

1  Luke  x.  19. 

2  See  Doane’s  Bible  Myths,  ch.  viii.  (New  York,  1882). 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  51 


to  Christmas  Day ;  there  are  the  festivals  of  (18)  the 
Assumption  of  the  Virgin  (15th  August)  and  of  (19)  the 
Nativity  of  the  Virgin  (8th  September),  corresponding 
to  the  movement  of  the  god  through  Virgo  ;  there  is  the 
conflict  of  Christ  and  his  disciples  with  the  autumnal 
asterisms,  (20)  the  Serpent  and  the  Scorpion  ;  and  finally 
there  is  the  curious  fact  that  the  Church  (21)  dedicates 
the  very  day  of  the  winter  solstice  (when  any  one  may 
very  naturally  doubt  the  rebirth  of  the  Sun)  to  St.  Thomas, 
who  doubted  the  truth  of  the  Resurrection  ! 

These  are  some  of,  and  by  no  means  all,  the  coincidences 
in  question.  But  they  are  sufficient,  I  think,  to  prove 
— even  allowing  for  possible  margins  of  error — the  truth 
of  our  general  contention.  To  go  into  the  parallelism 
of  the  careers  of  Krishna,  the  Indian  Sungod,  and  Jesus 
would  take  too  long  ;  because  indeed  the  correspondence 
is  so  extraordinarily  close  and  elaborate.1  I  propose, 
however,  at  the  close  of  this  chapter,  to  dwell  now  for  a 
moment  on  the  Christian  festival  of  the  Eucharist,  partly 
on  account  of  its  connexion  with  and  derivation  from 
the  astronomical  rites  and  Nature-celebrations  already 
alluded  to,  and  partly  on  account  of  the  light  which  the 
festival  generally,  whether  Christian  or  Pagan,  throws 
on  the  origins  of  Religious  Magic — a  subject  I  shall  have 
to  deal  with  in  the  next  chapter. 

I  have  already  (Ch.  II,  p.  25)  mentioned  the  Eucharistic 
rite  held  in  commemoration  of  Mithra,  and  the  indignant 
ascription  of  this  by  Justin  Martyr  to  the  wiles  of  the 
Devil.  Justin  Martyr  clearly  had  no  doubt  about  the 
resemblance  of  the  Mithraic  to  the  Christian  ceremony. 
A  Sacramental  meal,  as  mentioned  a  few  pages  back,  seems 
to  have  been  held  by  the  worshipers  of  Attis  2  in  com¬ 
memoration  of  their  god ;  and  the  ‘  mysteries  ’  of  the 

1  See  Robertson’s  Christianity  and,  Mythology,  Part  IT,  pp.  129-302  ; 
also  Doane’s  Bible  Myths,  ch.  xxviii,  p.  278. 

3  See  Frazer’s  Golden  Bough,  Part  IV,  p.  229. 


LIBRARY 

IWUVERSffif  OF  ?UWO!$ 


52 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Pagan  cults  generally  appear  to  have  included  rites — 
sometimes  half-savage,  sometimes  more  aesthetic — in  which 
a  dismembered  animal  was  eaten,  or  bread  and  wine  (the 
spirits  of  the  Com  and  the  Vine)  were  consumed,  as  repre¬ 
senting  the  body  of  the  god  whom  his  devotees  desired 
to  honour.  But  the  best  example  of  this  practice  is 
afforded  by  the  rites  of  Dionysus,  to  which  I  will  devote 
a  few  lines.  Dionysus,  like  other  Sun  or  Nature  deities, 
was  born  of  a  Virgin  (Semele  or  Demeter)  untainted  by  any 
earthly  husband  ;  and  born  on  the  25th  December.  He 
was  nurtured  in  a  Cave,  and  even  at  that  early  age  was 
identified  with  the  Ram  or  Lamb,  into  whose  form  he 
was  for  the  time  being  changed.  At  times  also  he  was 
worshiped  in  the  form  of  a  Bull.1  He  traveled  far  and 
wide  ;  and  brought  the  great  gift  of  wine  to  mankind.2 
He  was  called  Liberator,  and  Saviour.  His  grave  “  was 
shown  at  Delphi  in  the  inmost  shrine  of  the  temple  of 
Apollo.  Secret  offerings  were  brought  thither,  w’hile  the 
women  who  were  celebrating  the  feast  woke  up  the  new¬ 
born  god.  .  .  .  Festivals  of  this  kind  in  celebration  of 
the  extinction  and  resurrection  of  the  deity,  were  held 
(by  women  and  girls  only)  amid  the  mountains  at  night, 
every  third  year,  about  the  time  of  the  shortest  day.  The 
rites,  intended  to  express  the  excess  of  grief  and  joy  at 
the  death  and  reappearance  of  the  god,  were  wild  even 
to  savagery,  and  the  women  who  performed  them  were 
hence  known  by  the  expressive  names  of  Bacchae ,  Mcenads, 
and  Thyiades.  They  wandered  through  woods  and  moun¬ 
tains,  their  flying  locks  crowned  with  ivy  or  snakes,  brand¬ 
ishing  wands  and  torches,  to  the  hollow  sounds  of  the 
drum,  or  the  shrill  notes  of  the  flute,  with  wild  dances 
and  insane  cries  and  jubilation.  The  victims  of  the  sacrifice, 


1  The  Golden  Bough,  Part  II,  Book  II,  p.  164. 

2  “  I  am  the  true  Vine,”  says  the  Jesus  of  the  fourth  gospel,  perhaps 
with  an  implicit  and  hostile  reference  to  the  cult  of  Dionysus — in 
which  Robertson  suggests  ( Christianity  and  Mythology,  p.  357)  there 
was  a  ritual  miracle  of  turning  water  into  wine. 


THE  SYMBOLISM  OF  THE  ZODIAC  53 


oxen,  goats,  even  fawns  and  roes  from  the  forest,  were 
killed,  torn  in  pieces,  and  eaten  raw.  This  in  imitation  of 
the  treatment  of  Dionysus  by  the  Titans  ”  1 — who  it  was 
supposed  had  torn  the  god  in  pieces  when  a  child. 

Dupuis,  one  of  the  earliest  writers  (at  the  beginning  of 
last  century)  on  this  subject,  says,  describing  the  mystic 
rites  of  Dionysus  2  :  “  The  sacred  doors  of  the  Temple  in 
which  the  initiation  took  place  were  opened  only  once  a 
year,  and  no  stranger  might  ever  enter.  Night  lent  to 
these  august  mysteries  a  veil  which  was  forbidden  to 
be  drawn  aside — for  whoever  it  might  be. 3  It  was  the 
sole  occasion  for  the  representation  of  the  passion  of 
Bacchus  [Dionysus]  dead,  descended  into  hell,  and  rearisen 
— in  imitation  of  the  representation  of  the  sufferings  of 
Osiris  which,  according  to  Herodotus,  were  commemorated 
at  Sais  in  Egypt.  It  was  in  that  place  that  the  partition 
took  place  of  the  body  of  the  god, 4  which  was  then  eaten — 
the  ceremony,  in  fact,  of  which  our  Eucharist  is  only  a 
reflection ;  whereas  in  the  mysteries  of  Bacchus  actual 
raw  flesh  was  distributed,  which  each  of  those  present  had 
to  consume  in  commemoration  of  the  death  of  Bacchus 
dismembered  by  the  Titans,  and  whose  passion,  in  Chios 
and  Tenedos,  was  renewed  each  year  by  the  sacrifice  of 
a  man  who  represented  the  god.  5  Possibly  it  is  this  last 
fact  which  made  people  believe  that  the  Christians  (whose 
hoc  est  corpus  meum  and  sharing  of  an  Eucharistic  meal 
were  no  more  than  a  shadow  of  a  more  ancient  rite)  did 
really  sacrifice  a  child  and  devour  its  limbs/* 

That  Eucharistic  rites  were  very  very  ancient  is  plain 
from  the  Totem-sacraments  of  savages;  and  to  this  subject 
we  shall  now  turn. 

1  See  art.  Dionysus  Dictionary  of  Classical  Antiquities,  Nettleship 
and  Sandys  (3rd  edn.,  London,  1898). 

3  See  Charles  F.  Dupuis,  “  Traite  des  Mysteres ,”  ch.  i. 

3  Pausan,  Corinth,  ch.  37.  4  Clem.  Prot.  Eur.  Bacck. 

5  See  Porphyry,  De  Ahstinentia ,  lii,  §  56. 


IV 

TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS 

Much  has  been  written  on  the  origin  of  the  Totem-system 
- — the  system,  that  is,  of  naming  a  tribe  or  a  portion  of 
a  tribe  (say  a  clan)  after  some  animal — or  sometimes  also 
after  some  plant  or  tree  or  Nature-element,  like  fire  or 
rain  or  thunder  ;  but  at  best  the  subject  is  a  difficult  one 
for  us  moderns  to  understand.  A  careful  study  has  been 
made  of  it  by  Salamon  Reinach  in  his  Cultes,  Mythes  et 
Religions,1 2  where  he  formulates  his  conclusions  in  twelve 
statements  or  definitions  ;  but  even  so — though  his  sug¬ 
gestions  are  helpful — he  throws  very  little  light  on  the 
real  origin  of  the  system.  - 

There  are  three  main  difficulties.  The  first  is  to  under¬ 
stand  why  primitive  Man  should  name  his  Tribe  after 
an  animal  or  object  of  nature  at  all ;  the  second,  to  under¬ 
stand  on  what  principle  he  selected  the  particular  name 
(a  lion,  a  crocodile,  a  lady  bird,  a  certain  tree)  ;  the  third, 
why  he  should  make  of  the  said  totem  a  divinity,  and 
pay  honour  and  worship  to  it.  It  may  be  worth  while 
to  pause  for  a  moment  over  these. 

1  See  English  translation  of  certain  chapters  (published  by  David 
Nutt  in  1Q12)  entitled  Cults,  Myths  and  Religions,  pp.  1-25.  The 
French  original  is  in  three  large  volumes. 

2  The  same  maybe  said  of  the  formulated  statement  of  the  subject 
in  Morris  Jastrow's  Handbooks  of  the  History  of  Religion,  vol.  iv. 

54 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  55 


(1)  The  fact  that  the  Tribe  was  one  of  the  early  things 
for  which  Man  found  it  necessary  to  have  a  name  is  inter¬ 
esting,  because  it  shows  how  early  the  solidarity  and  psycho¬ 
logical  actuality  of  the  tribe  was  recognised  ;  and  as  to 
the  selection  of  a  name  from  some  animal  or  concrete 
object  of  Nature,  that  wras  inevitable,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  there  was  nothing  else  for  the  savage  to  choose  from. 
Plainly  to  call  his  tribe  “  The  Wayfarers  ”  or  “  The  Pion¬ 
eers  ”  or  the  “  Pacifists  ”  or  the  "  Invincibles,”  or  by  any 
of  the  thousand  and  one  names  which  modern  associations 
adopt,  would  have  been  impossible,  since  such  abstract 
terms  had  little  or  no  existence  in  his  mind.  And  again 
to  name  it  after  an  animal  was  the  most  obvious  thing  to 
do,  simply  because  the  animals  were  by  far  the  most  im¬ 
portant  features  or  accompaniments  of  his  own  life.  As 
I  am  dealing  in  this  book  largely  with  certain  psychological 
conditions  of  human  evolution,  it  has  to  be  pointed  out 
that  to  primitive  man  the  animal  was  the  nearest  and 
most  closely  related  of  all  objects.  Being  of  the  same 
order  of  consciousness  as  himself,  the  animal  appealed  to 
him  very  closely  as  his  mate  and  equal.  He  made  with 
regard  to  it  little  or  no  distinction  from  himself.  We  see 
this  very  clearly  in  the  case  of  children,  who  of  course 
represent  the  savage  mind,  and  who  regard  animals  simply 
as  their  mates  and  equals,  and  come  quickly  into  rapport 
with  them,  not  differentiating  themselves  from  them. 

(2)  As  to  the  particular  animal  or  other  object  selected 
in  order  to  give  a  name  to  the  Tribe,  this  would  no  doubt 
be  largely  accidental.  Any  unusual  incident  might  super- 
stitiously  precipitate  a  name.  We  can  hardly  imagine 
the  Tribe  scratching  its  congregated  head  in  the  deliberate 
effort  to  think  out  a  suitable  emblem  for  itself.  That  is 
not  the  way  in  which  nicknames  are  invented  in  a  school 
or  anywhere  else  to-day.  At  the  same  time  the  heraldic 
appeal  of  a  certain  object  of  nature,  animate  or  inanimate, 
would  be  deeply  and  widely  felt.  The  strength  of  the 


56 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


lion,  the  fleetness  of  the  deer,  the  food-value  of  a  bear,  the 
flight  of  a  bird,  the  awful  jaws  of  a  crocodile,  might  easily 
mesmerise  a  whole  tribe.  Reinach  points  out,  with  great 
justice,  that  many  tribes  placed  themselves  under  the 
protection  of  animals  which  were  supposed  (rightly  or 
wrongly)  to  act  as  guides  and  augurs,  foretelling  the  future. 
“  Diodorus/'  he  says,  “  distinctly  states  that  the  hawk, 
in  Egypt,  was  venerated  because  it  foretold  the  future." 
[Birds  generally  act  as  weather-prophets.]  “  In  Australia 
and  Samoa  the  kangaroo,  the  crow  and  the  owl  premonish 
their  fellow  clansmen  of  events  to  come.  At  one  time 
the  Samoan  warriors  went  so  far  as  to  rear  owls  for  their 
prophetic  qualities  in  war."  [The  jackal,  or  ‘  pathfinder  ' 
— whose  tracks  sometimes  lead  to  the  remains  of  a  food- 
animal  slain  by  a  lion,  and  many  birds  and  insects,  have 
a  value  of  this  kind.]  “  This  use  of  animal  totems  for 
purposes  of  augury  is,  in  all  likelihood,  of  great  antiquity. 
Men  must  soon  have  realised  that  the  senses  of  animals 
were  acuter  than  their  own  ;  nor  is  it  surprising  that  they 
should  have  expected  their  totems — that  is  to  say,  their 
natural  allies — to  forewarn  them  both  of  unsuspected 
dangers  and  of  those  provisions  of  nature,  wells  especially, 
which  animals  seem  to  scent  by  instinct."  1  And  again, 
beyond  all  this,  I  have  little  doubt  that  there  are  sub¬ 
conscious  affinities  which  unite  certain  tribes  to  certain 
animals  or  plants,  affinities  whose  origin  we  cannot  now 
trace,  though  they  are  very  real — the  same  affinities  that 
we  recognise  as  existing  between  individual  persons  and 
certain  objects  of  nature.  W.  H.  Hudson — himself  in 
many  respects  having  this  deep  and  primitive  relation  to 
nature — speaks  in  a  very  interesting  and  autobiographical 
volume z  of  the  extraordinary  fascination  exercised  upon 
him  as  a  boy,  not  only  by  a  snake,  but  by  certain  trees, 
and  especially  by  a  particular  flowering-plant  “  not  more 

1  See  Reinach,  Eng.  trans.,  op.  cit.,  pp.  20,  21. 

3  Far  away  and  Long  ago  (1918)  chs.  xvi  and  xvii. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  57 


than  a  foot  in  height,  with  downy  soft  pale  green  leaves, 
and  clusters  of  reddish  blossoms,  something  like  valerian/ * 

.  .  .  One  of  my  sacred  flowers,”  he  calls  it,  and  insists 
on  the  “  inexplicable  attraction  ”  which  it  had  for  him. 
In  various  ways  of  this  kind  one  can  perceive  how  parti¬ 
cular  totems  came  to  be  selected  by  particular  peoples. 

(3)  As  to  the  tendency  to  divinise  these  totems,  this 
arises  no  doubt  partly  out  of  question  (2).  The  animal 
or  other  object  admired  on  account  of  its  strength  or  swift¬ 
ness,  or  adopted  as  guardian  of  the  tribe  because  of  its 
keen  sight  or  prophetic  quality,  or  infinitely  prized  on 
account  of  its  food-value,  or  felt  for  any  other  reason  to 
have  a  peculiar  relation  and  affinity  to  the  tribe,  is  by 
that  fact  set  apart.  It  becomes  taboo.  It  must  not  be 
killed — except  under  necessity  and  by  sanction  of  the 
whole  tribe — nor  injured  ;  and  all  dealings  with  it  must 
be  fenced  round  with  regulations.  It  is  out  of  this  taboo 
or  system  of  taboos  that,  according  to  Reinach,  religion 
arose.  "  I  propose  (he  says)  to  define  religion  as :  A 
sum  of  scruples  ( taboos )  which  impede  the  free  exercise  of 
our  faculties.1  Obviously  this  definition  is  gravely  defi¬ 
cient,  simply  because  it  is  purely  negative,  and  leaves 
out  of  account  the  positive  aspect  of  the  subject.  In 
Man,  the  positive  content  of  religion  is  the  instinctive 
sense — whether  conscious  or  subconscious — of  an  inner  unity 
and  continuity  with  the  world  around.  This  is  the  stuff 
out  of  which  religion  is  made.  The  scruples  or  taboos 
which  “  impede  the  freedom  ”  of  this  relation  are  the 
negative  forces  which  give  outline  and  form  to  the  relation. 
These  are  the  things  which  generate  the  rites  and  ceremonials 
of  religion  ;  and  as  far  as  Reinach  means  by  religion  merely 
rites  and  ceremonies  he  is  correct ;  but  clearly  he  only 
covers  half  the  subject.  The  tendency  to  divinise  the 
totem  is  at  least  as  much  dependent  on  the  positive  sense 
of  unity  with  it,  as  on  the  negative  scruples  which  limit 
1  See  Orpheus  by  S.  Reinach,  p.  3. 


58 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


the  relation  in  each  particular  case.  But  I  shall  return 
to  this  subject  presently,  and  more  than  once,  with  the 
view7  of  clarifying  it.  Just  now  it  will  be  best  to  illustrate 
the  nature  of  Totems  generally,  and  in  some  detail. 

As  would  be  gathered  from  what  I  have  just  said,  there 
is  found  among  all  the  more  primitive  peoples,  and  in 
all  parts  of  the  world,  an  immense  variety  of  totem-names. 
The  Dinkas,  for  instance,  are  a  rather  intelligent  well- 
grown  people  inhabiting  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Nile 
in  the  vicinit)/  of  the  great  swamps.  According  to  Dr. 
Seligman  their  clans  have  for  totems  the  lion,  the  ele¬ 
phant,  the  crocodile,  the  hippopotamus,  the  fox,  and  the 
hyaena,  as  well  as  certain  birds  which  infest  and  damage 
the  corn,  some  plants  and  trees,  and  such  things  as  rain, 
fire,  etc.  “  Each  clan  speaks  of  its  totem  as  its  ancestor, 
and  refrains  [as  a  rule]  from  injuring  or  eating  it.”  1  The 
members  of  the  Crocodile  clan  call  themselves  “  brothers 
of  the  crocodile.”  The  tribes  of  Bechuana-land  have  a 
very  similar  list  of  totem-names — the  buffalo,  the  fish, 
the  porcupine,  the  wild  vine,  etc.  They  too  have  a 
Crocodile  clan,  but  they  call  the  crocodile  their  father ! 
The  tribes  of  Australia  much  the  same  again,  with  the 
differences  suitable  to  their  country  ;  and  the  Red  Indians 
of  North  America  the  same.  Garcilasso  della  Vega,  the 
Spanish  historian,  son  of  an  Inca  princess  by  one  of  the 
Spanish  conquerors  of  Peru  and  author  of  the  well-known 
book  Commentarias  Reales,  says  in  that  book  (i,  75),  speak¬ 
ing  of  the  pre-Inca  period,  “  An  Indian  (of  Peru)  was  not 
considered  honorable  unless  he  was  descended  from  a 
fountain,  river  or  lake,  or  even  from  the  sea,  or  from  a  wild 
animal,  as  a  bear,  lion,  tiger,  eagle,  or  the  bird  they  call 
cuntur  (condor),  or  some  other  bird  of  prey.”  3  According 

1  See  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  iv,  p.  31. 

2  See  Andrew  Lang,  Custom  and  Myth,  p.  104,  also  Myth ,  Ritual 
and  Religion,  vol.  i,  pp.  71,  76,  etc. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  59 


to  Lewis  Morgan,  the  North  American  Indians  of  various 
tribes  had  for  totems  the  wolf,  bear,  beaver,  turtle,  deer, 
snipe,  heron,  hawk,  crane,  loon,  turkey,  muskrat  ;  pike, 
catfish,  carp ;  buffalo,  elk,  reindeer,  eagle,  hare,  rabbit, 
snake  ;  reed-grass,  sand,  rock,  and  tobacco-plant. 

So  wre  might  go  on  rather  indefinitely.  I  need  hardly 
say  that  in  more  modern  and  civilised  life,  relics  of  the 
totem  system  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  forms  of  the 
heraldic  creatures  adopted  for  their  crests  by  different 
families,  and  in  the  bears,  lions,  eagles,  the  sun,  moon  and 
stars  and  so  forth,  which  still  adorn  the  flags  and  are 
flaunted  as  the  insignia  of  the  various  nations.  The  names 
may  not  have  been  originally  adopted  from  any  definite 
belief  in  blood-relationship  wdth  the  animal  or  other  object 
in  question  ;  but  when,  as  Robertson  says  {Pagan  Christs, 
p.  104),  a  “  savage  learned  that  he  wTas  ‘a  Bear'  and  that 
his  father  and  grandfather  and  forefathers  were  so  before 
him,  it  was  really  impossible,  after  ages  in  which  totem- 
names  thus  passed  current,  that  he  should  fail  to  assume 
that  his  folk  wrere  descended  from  a  bear/' 

As  a  rule,  as  may  be  imagined,  the  savage  tribesman 
will  on  no  account  eat  his  tribal  totem-animal.  Such 
would  naturally  be  deemed  a  kind  of  sacrilege.  Also  it 
must  be  remarked  that  some  totems  are  hardly  suitable 
for  eating.  Yet  it  is  important  to  observe  that  occasion¬ 
ally,  and  guarding  the  ceremony  with  great  precautions, 
it  has  been  an  almost  universal  custom  for  the  tribal  elders 
to  call  a  feast  at  which  an  animal  (either  the  totem  or 
some  other)  is  killed  and  communally  eaten — and  this  in 
order  that  the  tribesmen  may  absorb  some  virtue  belonging 
to  it,  and  may  confirm  their  identity  with  the  tribe  and 
wdth  each  other.  The  eating  of  the  bear  or  other  animal, 
the  sprinkling  with  its  blood,  and  the  general  ritual  in 
which  the  participants  shared  its  flesh,  or  dressed  and 
disguised  themselves  in  its  skin,  or  otherwise  identified 
themselves  wdth  it,  was  to  them  a  symbol  of  their  com- 


60 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


munity  of  life  with  each  other,  and  a  means  of  their 
renewal  and  salvation  in  the  holy  emblem.  And  this 
custom,  as  the  reader  will  perceive,  became  the  origin  of 
the  Eucharists  and  Holy  Communions  of  the  later  religions. 

Professor  Robertson-Smith's  celebrated  Camel  affords 
an  instance  of  this.1  It  appears  that  St.  Nilus  (fifth  century) 
has  left  a  detailed  account  of  the  occasional  sacrifice  in 
his  time  of  a  spotless  white  camel  among  the  Arabs  of  the 
Sinai  region,  which  closely  resembles  a  totemic  communion- 
feast.  The  uncooked  blood  and  flesh  of  the  animal  had 
to  be  entirely  consumed  by  the  faithful  before  daybreak. 
“  The  slaughter  of  the  victim,  the  sacramental  drinking 
of  the  blood,  and  devouring  in  wild  haste  of  the  pieces  of 
still  quivering  flesh,  recall  the  details  of  the  Dionysiac 
and  other  festivals."  3  Robertson-Smith  himself  says  : — 
“  The  plain  meaning  is  that  the  victim  was  devoured  before 
its  life  had  left  the  still  warm  blood  and  flesh  .  .  .  and 
that  thus  in  the  most  literal  way,  all  those  who  shared 
in  the  ceremony  absorbed  part  of  the  victim's  life  into 
themselves.  One  sees  how  much  more  forcibly  than 
any  ordinary  meal  such  a  rite  expresses  the  establishment 
or  confirmation  of  a  bond  of  common  life  between  the 
worshipers,  and  also,  since  the  blood  is  shed  upon  the 
altar  itself,  between  the  worshipers  and  their  god.  In 
this  sacrifice,  then,  the  significant  factors  are  two  :  the 
conveyance  of  the  living  blood  to  the  godhead,  and  the 
absorption  of  the  living  flesh  and  blood  into  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  the  worshipers.  Each  of  these  is  effected  in 
the  simplest  and  most  direct  manner,  so  that  the  meaning 
of  the  ritual  is  perfectly  transparent." 

It  seems  strange,  of  course,  that  men  should  eat  their 
totems  ;  and  it  must  not  by  any  means  be  supposed  that 
this  practice  is  (or  was)  universal ;  but  it  undoubtedly 

1  See  his  Religion  of  the  Semites,  p.  320. 

3  They  also  recall  the  rites  of  the  Passover — though  in  this  latter 
the  blood  was  no  longer  drunk,  nor  the  flesh  eaten  raw. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  61 


obtains  in  some  cases.  As  Miss  Harrison  says  ( Themis , 
p.  123),  "  yon  do  not  as  a  rule  eat  your  relations/’  and 
as  a  rule  the  eating  of  a  totem  is  tabu  and  forbidden,  but 
(Miss  Harrison  continues)  “  at  certain  times  and  under 
certain  restrictions  a  man  not  only  may,  but  must ,  eat  of 
his  totem,  though  only  sparingly,  as  of  a  thing  sacrosanct.” 
The  ceremonial  carried  out  in  a  communal  way  by  the 
tribe  not  only  identifies  the  tribe  with  the  totem  (animal), 
but  is  held,  according  to  early  magical  ideas,  and  when 
the  animal  is  desiied  for  food,  to  favour  its  multiplication. 
The  human  tribe  partakes  of  the  mana  or  life-force  of  the 
animal,  and  is  strengthened  ;  the  animal  tribe  is  sympa¬ 
thetically  renewed  by  the  ceremonial  and  multiplies  exceed¬ 
ingly.  The  slaughter  of  the  sacred  animal  and  (often) 
the  simultaneous  outpouring  of  human  blood  seals  the 
compact  and  confirms  the  magic.  This  is  well  illustrated 
by  a  ceremony  of  the  ‘  Emu  ’  tribe  referred  to  by  Dr. 
Frazer : — 

”  In  order  to  multiply  Emus  which  are  an  important 
article  of  food,  the  men  of  the  Emu  totem  in  the  Arunta 
tribe  proceed  as  follows  :  They  clear  a  small  spot  of  level 
ground,  and  opening  veins  in  their  arms  they  let  the  blood 
stream  out  until  the  surface  of  the  ground  for  a  space  of 
about  three  square  yards  is  soaked  with  it.  When  the 
blood  has  dried  and  caked,  it  forms  a  hard  and  fairly  im¬ 
permeable  surface,  on  which  they  paint  the  sacred  design 
of  the  emu  totem,  especially  the  parts  of  the  bird  which 
they  like  best  to  eat,  namely,  the  fat  and  the  eggs.  Round 
this  painting  the  men  sit  and  sing.  Afterwards  performers 
wearing  long  head-dresses  to  represent  the  long  neck  and 
small  head  of  the  emu,  mimic  the  appearance  of  the  bird 
as  it  stands  aimlessly  peering  about  in  all  directions.”  1 

Thus  blood  sacrifice  comes  in  ;  and — (whether  this  has 
ever  actually  happened  in  the  case  of  the  Central  Australians 

1  The  Golden  Bough  i,  85 — with  reference  to  Spencer  and  Gillen's 
Native  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  pp.  179,  189. 


62 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


I  know  not) — we  can  easily  imagine  a  member  of  the  Emu 
tribe,  and  disguised  as  an  actual  emu,  having  been  cere¬ 
monially  slaughtered  as  a  firstfruits  and  promise  of  the 
expected  and  prayed-for  emu-crop  ;  just  as  the  same 
certainly  has  happened  in  the  case  of  men  wearing  beast- 
masks  of  Bulls  or  Rams  or  Bears  being  sacrificed  in  propi¬ 
tiation  of  Bull-gods,  Ram-gods  or  Bear-gods  or  simply  in 
pursuance  of  some  kind  of  magic  to  favour  the  multipli¬ 
cation  of  these  food-animals. 

“  In  the  light  of  totemistic  ways  of  thinking  we  see  plainly 
enough  the  relation  of  man  to  food-animals.  You  need 
or  at  least  desire  flesh  food,  yet  you  shrink  from  slaughtering 
‘  your  brother  the  ox ' ;  you  desire  his  mana,  yet  you 
respect  his  tabu,  for  in  you  and  him  alike  runs  the  common 
life-blood.  On  your  own  individual  responsibility  you 
would  never  kill  him  ;  but  for  the  common  weal,  on  great 
occasions,  and  in  a  fashion  conducted  with  scrupulous 
care,  it  is  expedient  that  he  die  for  his  people,  and  that 
they  feast  upon  his  flesh/'  1 

In  her  little  book  Ancient  Art  and  Ritual  2  Jane  Harrison 
describes  the  dedication  of  a  holy  Bull,  as  conducted  in 
Greece  at  Elis,  and  at  Magnesia  and  other  cities.  “  There 
at  the  annual  fair  year  by  year  the  stewards  of  the  city 
bought  a  Bull  ‘  the  finest  that  could  be  got,’  and  at  the 
new  moon  of  the  month  at  the  beginning  of  seed-time 
[?  April]  they  dedicated  it  for  the  city’s  welfare.  .  .  .  The 
Bull  was  led  in  procession  at  the  head  of  which  went  the 
chief  priest  and  priestess  of  the  city.  With  them  went 
a  herald  and  the  sacrificer,  and  two  bands  of  youths  and 
maidens.  So  holy  was  the  Bull  that  nothing  unlucky 
might  come  near  him.  The  herald  pronounced  aloud  a 
prayer  for  ‘  the  safety  of  the  city  and  the  land,  and  the 
citizens,  and  the  women  and  children,  for  peace  and  wealth, 
and  for  the  bringing  forth  of  grain  and  all  other  fruits, 

1  Themis,  p.  140. 

3  Home  University  Library,  p  87. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  63 


and  of  cattle/  All  this  longing  for  fertility,  for  food  and 
children,  focuses  round  the  holy  Bull,  whose  holiness  is 
his  strength  and  fruitfulness.”  The  Bull  is  sacrificed. 
The  flesh  is  divided  in  solemn  feast  among  those  who 
take  part  in  the  procession.  “  The  holy  flesh  is  not  offered 
to  a  god,  it  is  eaten — to  every  man  his  portion — by  each 
and  every  citizen,  that  he  may  get  his  share  of  the  strength 
of  the  Bull,  of  the  luck  of  the  State.”  But  at  Athens  the 
Bouphonia,  as  it  was  called,  was  followed  by  a  curious 
ceremony.  “  The  hide  was  stuffed  with  straw  and  sewed 
up,  and  next  the  stuffed  animal  was  set  on  its  feet  and 
yoked  to  a  plough  as  though  it  were  ploughing.  The  Death 
is  followed  by  a  Resurrection.  Now  this  is  all  important. 
We  are  so  accustomed  to  think  of  sacrifice  as  the  death, 
the  giving  up,  the  renouncing  of  something.  But  sacrifice 
does  not  mean  ‘  death  ’  at  all.  It  means  making  holy, 
sanctifying  :  and  holiness  was  to  primitive  man  just  special 
strength  and  life.  What  they  wanted  from  the  Bull  was 
just  that  special  life  and  strength  which  all  the  year  long 
they  had  put  into  him,  and  nourished  and  fostered.  That 
life  was  in  his  blood.  They  could  not  eat  that  flesh  nor 
drink  that  blood  unless  they  killed  him.  So  he  must  die. 
But  it  was  not  to  give  him  up  to  the  gods  that  they  killed 
him,  not  to  ‘  sacrifice  '  him  in  our  sense,  but  to  have  him, 
keep  him,  eat  him,  live  by  him  and  through  him,  by  his 
grace.” 

We  have  already  had  to  deal  with  instances  of  the 
ceremonial  eating  of  the  sacred  he-Lamb  or  Ram,  immolated 
in  the  Spring  season  of  the  year,  and  partaken  of  in  a  kind 
of  communal  feast — not  without  reference  (at  any  rate 
in  later  times)  to  a  supposed  Lamb-god.  Among  the 
Ainos  in  the  North  of  Japan,  as  also  among  the  Gilyaks 
in  Eastern  Siberia,  the  Bear  is  the  great  food-animal,  and 
is  worshiped  as  the  supreme  giver  of  health  and  strength. 
There  also  a  similar  ritual  of  sacrifice  occurs.  A  perfect 
Bear  is  caught  and  caged.  He  is  fed  up  and  even 


64 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


pampered  to  the  day  of  his  death.  “  Fish,  brandy  and 
other  delicacies  are  offered  to  him.  Some  of  the  people 
prostrate  themselves  before  him  ;  his  coming  into  a  house 
brings  a  blessing,  and  if  he  sniffs  at  the  food  that  brings 
a  blessing  too.”  Then  he  is  led  out  and  slain.  A  great 
feast  takes  place,  the  flesh  is  divided,  cupfuls  of  the  blood 
are  drunk  by  the  men  ;  the  tribe  is  united  and  strengthened, 
and  the  Bear-god  blesses  the  ceremony — the  ideal  Bear 
that  has  given  its  life  for  the  people.1 

That  the  eating  of  the  flesh  of  an  animal  or  a  man 
conveys  to  you  some  of  the  qualities,  the  life-force,  the 
mana,  of  that  animal  or  man,  is  an  idea  which  one  often 
meets  with  among  primitive  folk.  Hence  the  common 
tendency  to  eat  enemy  warriors  slain  in  battle  against 
your  tribe.  By  doing  so  you  absorb  some  of  their  valour 
and  strength.  Even  the  enemy  scalps  which  an  Apache 
Indian  might  hang  from  his  belt  were  something  magical 
to  add  to  the  Apache’s  power.  As  Gilbert  Murray  says,2 
“  you  devoured  the  holy  animal  to  get  its  mana,  its  swift¬ 
ness,  its  strength,  its  great  endurance,  just  as  the  savage 
now  will  eat  his  enemy’s  brain  or  heart  or  hands  to  get 
some  particular  quality  residing  there.”  Even — as  he 
explains  on  an  earlier  page — mere  contact  was  often  con¬ 
sidered  sufficient — “  we  have  holy  pillars  whose  holiness 
consists  in  the  fact  that  they  have  been  touched  by  the 
blood  of  a  bull.”  And  in  this  connexion  we  may  note 
that  nearly  all  the  Christian  Churches  have  a  great  belief 
in  the  virtue  imparted  by  the  mere  ‘  laying  on  of  hands.’ 

In  quite  a  different  connexion — we  read  3  that  among  the 
Spartans  a  warrior-boy  would  often  beg  for  the  love  of 
the  elder  warrior  whom  he  admired  (i.e.  the  contact  with 

1  See  Art  and  Ritual,  pp.  92-98  ;  The  Golden  Bough,  ii,  375  seq.  ; 
Themis,  pp.  140,  141  ;  etc. 

a  Four  Stages  oj  Greek  Religion,  p.  36. 

3  Aelian  VII,  iii,  12  :  avroi  yovv  (ot  irdid^Q)  SeovraL  tGjv  tpaaratv 
d<T7rvuv  avroig.  See  also  E.  Bethe  on  “  Die  Dorische  Knabenliebe  ” 
in  the  Rheinisches  Museum,  vol.  26,  iii,  461. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  65 


his  body)  in  order  to  obtain  in  that  way  a  portion  of  the 
latter’s  courage  and  prowess.  That  through  the  mediation 
of  the  lips  one’s  spirit  may  be  united  to  the  spirit  of  another 
person  is  an  idea  not  unfamiliar  to  the  modern  mind ; 
while  the  exchange  of  blood,  clothes,  locks  of  hair,  etc., 
by  lovers  is  a  custom  known  all  over  the  world.1 

To  suppose  that  by  eating  another  you  absorb  his  or 
her  soul  is  somewhat  naive  certainly.  Perhaps  it  is  more 
native,  more  primitive.  Yet  there  may  be  seme  truth 
even  in  that  idea.  Certainly  the  food  that  one  eats  has 
a  psychological  effect,  and  the  flesh-eaters  among  the 
human  race  have  a  different  temperament  as  a  rule  from 
the  fruit  and  vegetable  eaters,  while  among  the  animals 
(though  other  causes  may  come  in  here)  the  Carnivora 
are  decidedly  more  cruel  and  less  gentle  than  the  Herbivora. 

To  return  to  the  rites  of  Dionysus,  Gilbert  Murray, 
speaking  of  Orphism — a  great  wave  of  religious  reform 
which  swept  over  Greece  and  South  Italy  in  the  sixth 
century  B.c. — says  :  2  “A  curious  relic  of  primitive  super¬ 
stition  and  cruelty  remained  firmly  imbedded  in  Orphism, 
a  doctrine  irrational  and  unintelligible,  and  for  that  very 
reason  wrapped  in  the  deepest  and  most  sacred  mystery  : 
a  belief  in  the  sacrifice  of  Dionysus  himself,  and  the  purifi¬ 
cation  of  man  by  his  blood.  It  seems  possible  that  the 
savage  Thracians,  in  the  fury  of  their  worship  on  the 
mountains,  when  they  were  possessed  by  the  god  and 
became  ‘  wild  beasts,’  actually  tore  with  their  teeth  and 
hands  any  hares,  goats,  fawns  or  the  like  that  they  came 
across.  .  .  .  The  Orphic  congregations  of  later  times,  in 
their  most  holy  gatherings,  solemnly  partook  of  the  blood 
of  a  bull,  which  was  by  a  mystery  the  blood  of  Dionysus- 
Zagreus  himself,  the  Bull  of  God,  slain  in  sacrifice  for  the 
purification  of  man.”  3 

1  See  Crawley’s  Mystic  Rose,  pp.  238,  242. 

3  See  Notes  to  his  translation  of  the  Bacchce  of  Euripides. 

3  For  a  description  of  this  orgy  see  Theocritus,  Idyll  xxvi ;  also 

5 


66 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Such  instances  of  early  communal  feasts,  which  fulfilled 
the  double  part  of  confirming  on  the  one  hand  the  solid¬ 
arity  of  the  tribe,  and  on  the  other  of  bringing  the  tribe, 
by  the  shedding  of  the  blood  of  a  divine  Victim  into  close 
relationship  with  the  very  source  of  its  life,  are  plentiful 
to  find.  “  The  sacramental  rite/’  says  Professor  Robertson- 
Smith,1  "  is  also  an  atoning  rite,  which  brings  the  com¬ 
munity  again  into  harmony  with  its  alienated  god — 
atonement  being  simply  an  act  of  communion  designed 
to  wipe  out  all  memory  of  previous  estrangement.  With 
this  subject  I  shall  deal  more  specially  in  chapter  vii  below. 
Meanwhile  as  instances  of  early  Eucharists  we  may  mention 
the  following  cases,  remembering  always  that  as  the  blood 
is  regarded  as  the  Life,  the  drinking  or  partaking  of,  or 
sprinkling  with,  blood  is  always  an  acknowledgment  of 
the  common  life  ;  and  that  the  juice  of  the  grape  being 
regarded  as  the  blood  of  the  Vine,  wine  in  the  later  cere¬ 
monials  quite  easily  and  naturally  takes  the  place  of  the 
blood  in  the  early  sacrifices. 

Thus  P.  Andrada  La  Crozius,  a  French  missionary, 
and  one  of  the  first  Christians  who  went  to  Nepaul  and 
Thibet,  says  in  his  History  of  India  :  "  Their  Grand  Lama 
celebrates  a  species  of  sacrifice  with  bread  and  wine,  in 
which,  after  taking  a  small  quantity  himself,  he  distributes 
the  rest  among  the  Lamas  present  at  this  ceremony.”  - 


for  explanations  of  it,  Lang’s  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  24T-260,  on  Dionysus.  The  Encyclopedia  Brit.,  article  '‘Orpheus,” 
says  • — “  Orpheus,  in  the  manner  of  his  death,  was  considered  to 
personate  the  god  Dionysus,  and  was  thus  representative  of  the  god 
torn  to  pieces  every  year — a  ceremony  enacted  by  the  Bacchae  in  the 
earliest  times  with  a  human  victim,  and  afterwards  with  a  bull,  to 
represent  the  bull-formed  god.  A  distinct  feature  of  this  ritual  was 
u)/io(payia  (eating  the  flesh  of  the  victim  raw),  whereby  the  com¬ 
municants  imagined  that  they  consumed  and  assimilated  the  god 
represented  by  the  victim,  and  thus  became  filled  with  the  divine 
ecstasy.”  Compare  also  the  Hindu  doctrine  of  Prajapati,  the  dis¬ 
membered  Lord  of  Creation. 

1  Religion  of  the  Semites t  p.  302.  2  See  Doane’s  Bible  Myths,  p.  306. 


TOTEM-SACRAMENTS  AND  EUCHARISTS  67 


"  The  old  Egyptians  celebrated  the  resurrection  of  Osiris 
by  a  sacrament,  eating  the  sacred  cake  or  wafer  after  it 
had  been  consecrated  by  the  priest,  and  thereby  becoming 
veritable  flesh  of  his  flesh.”  1  As  is  well  known,  the  eating 
of  bread  or  dough  sacramentally  (sometimes  mixed  with 
blood  or  seed)  as  an  emblem  of  community  of  life  with 
the  divinity,  is  an  extremely  ancient  practice  or  ritual. 
Dr.  Frazer  3  says  of  the  Aztecs,  that  “  twice  a  year,  in  May 
and  December,  an  image  of  the  great  god  Huitzilopochtli 
was  made  of  dough,  then  broken  in  pieces  and  solemnly 
eaten  by  his  worshipers.”  And  Lord  Kingsborough  in 
his  Mexican  Antiquities  (vol.  vi,  p.  220)  gives  a  record  of 
a  “  most  Holy  Supper  ”  in  which  these  people  ate  the 
flesh  of  their  god.  It  was  a  cake  made  of  certain  seeds, 
“  and  having  made  it,  they  blessed  it  in  their  manner, 
and  broke  it  into  pieces,  which  the  high  priest  put  into 
certain  very  clean  vessels,  and  took  a  thorn  of  maguey 
which  resembles  a  very  thick  needle,  with  which  he  took 
up  with  the  utmost  reverence  single  morsels,  which  he 
put  into  the  mouth  of  each  individual  in  the  manner  of 
a  communion.”  Acosta  3  confirms  this  and  similar  accounts. 
The  Peruvians  partook  of  a  sacrament  consisting  of  a 
pudding  of  coarsely  ground  maize,  of  which  a  portion 
had  been  smeared  on  the  idol.  The  priest  sprinkled  it 
with  the  blood  of  the  victim  before  distributing  it  to  the 
people.”  Priest  and  people  then  all  took  their  shares 
in  turn,  “  with  great  care  that  no  particle  should  be  allowed 
to  fall  to  the  ground — this  being  looked  upon  as  a  great 
sin.”  4 

Moving  from  Peru  to  China  (instead  of  *  from  China 
to  Peru  ’)  we  find  that  “  the  Chinese  pour  wine  (a  very 

t 

*  From  The  Great  Law,  of  religious  origins  :  by  W.  Williamson 
(1899),  p.  177. 

2  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  ii,  p.  79. 

3  Natural  and  Moral  History  of  the  Indies.  London  (1604). 

4  See  Markham's  Rites  and  laws  of  the  Incas,  p.  27. 


68 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


general  substitute  for  blood)  on  a  straw  image  of  Confucius, 
and  then  all  present  drink  of  it,  and  taste  the  sacrificial 
victim,  in  order  to  participate  in  the  grace  of  Confucius." 
[Here  again  the  Corn  and  Wine  are  blended  in  one  rite.] 
And  of  Tartary  Father  Grueber  thus  testifies  :  “  This  only 
I  do  affirm,  that  the  devil  so  mimics  the  Catholic  Church 
there,  that  although  no  European  or  Christian  has  ever 
been  there,  still  in  all  essential  things  they  agree  so  com¬ 
pletely  with  the  Roman  Church,  as  even  to  celebrate  the 
Host  with  bread  and  wine  :  with  my  own  eyes  I  have  seen 
it”  1  These  few  instances  are  sufficient  to  show  the 
extraordinarily  wide  diffusion  of  Totem-sacraments  and 
Eucharistic  rites  all  over  the  world. 

1  For  these  two  quotations  see  Jevons’  Introduction  to  the  History 
of  Religion,  pp.  148  and  219. 


V 

FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 

I  have  wandered,  in  pursuit  of  Totems  and  the  Eucharist, 
some  way  from  the  astronomical  thread  of  Chapters  II 
and  III,  and  now  it  would  appear  that  in  order  to  under¬ 
stand  religious  origins  we  must  wander  still  farther.  The 
chapters  mentioned  were  largely  occupied  with  Sungods 
and  astronomical  phenomena,  but  now  we  have  to  consider 
an  earlier  period  when  there  were  no  definite  forms  of 
gods,  and  when  none  but  the  vaguest  astronomical  know¬ 
ledge  existed.  Sometimes  in  historical  matters  it  is  best 
and  safest  to  move  thus  backwards  in  Time,  from  the  things 
recent  and  fairly  well  known  to  things  more  ancient  and 
less  known.  In  this  wray  we  approach  more  securely  to 
some  understanding  of  the  dim  and  remote  past. 

It  is  clear  that  before  any  definite  speculations  on 
heaven-dwelling  gods  or  divine  beings  had  arisen  in  the 
human  mind — or  any  clear  theories  of  how  the  sun  and 
moon  and  stars  might  be  connected  with  the  changes  of 
the  seasons  on  the  earth — there  were  still  certain  obvious 
things  which  appealed  to  everybody,  learned  or  unlearned 
alike.  One  of  these  was  the  return  of  Vegetation,  bringing 
with  it  the  fruits  or  the  promise  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth, 
for  human  food,  and  also  bringing  with  it  increase  of  animal 
life,  for  food  in  another  form  ;  and  the  other  was  the  return 
of  Light  and  Warmth,  making  life  easier  in  all  wTays.  Food 

69 


70 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


delivering  from  the  fear  of  starvation  ;  Light  and  Warmth 
delivering  from  the  fear  of  danger  and  of  cold.  These 
were  three  glorious  things  which  returned  together  and 
brought  salvation  and  renewed  life  to  man.  The  period 
of  their  return  was  ‘  Spring/  and  though  Spring  and  its 
benefits  might  fade  away  in  time,  still  there  was  always 
the  hope  of  its  return — though  even  so  it  may  have  been 
a  long  time  in  human  evolution  before  man  discovered 
that  it  really  did  always  return,  and  (with  certain 
allowances)  at  equal  intervals  of  time. 

Long  then  before  any  Sun  or  Star  gods  could  be  called 
in,  the  return  of  the  Vegetation  must  have  enthralled 
man's  attention,  and  filled  him  with  hope  and  joy.  Yet 
since  its  return  was  somewhat  variable  and  uncertain 
the  question,  What  could  man  do  to  assist  that  return  ? 
naturally  became  a  pressing  one.  It  is  now  generally  held 
that  the  use  of  Magic — sympathetic  magic — arose  in  this 
way.  Sympathetic  magic  seems  to  have  been  generated 
by  a  belief  that  your  own  actions  cause  a  similar  response 
in  things  and  persons  around  you.  Yet  this  belief  did  not 
rest  on  any  philosophy  or  argument,  but  was  purely 
instinctive  and  sometimes  of  the  nature  of  a  mere  corporeal 
reaction.  Every  schoolboy  knows  how  in  watching  a 
comrade’s  high  jump  at  the  Sports  he  often  finds  himself 
lifting  a  knee  at  the  moment  4  to  help  him  over  ’  ;  at  football 
matches  quarrels  sometimes  arise  among  the  spectators 
by  reason  of  an  ill-placed  kick  coming  from  a  too  enthu¬ 
siastic  on-lookcr,  behind  one ;  undergraduates  running 
on  the  tow-path  beside  their  College  boat  in  the  races 
will  hurry  even  faster  than  the  boat  in  order  to  increase 
its  speed ;  there  is  in  each  case  an  automatic  bodily 
response  increased  by  one's  own  desire.  A  person  acts 
the  part  which  he  desires  to  be  successful.  He  thinks  to 
transfer  his  energy  in  that  way.  Again,  if  by  chance  one 
witnesses  a  painful  accident,  a  crushed  foot  or  what-not, 
it  commonly  happens  that  one  feels  a  pain  in  the  same 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


71 


part  oneself — a  sympathetic  pain.  What  more  natural 
than  to  suppose  that  the  pain  really  is  transferred  from 
the  one  person  to  the  other  ?  and  how  easy  the  inference 
that  by  tormenting  a  wretched  scape-goat  or  crucifying 
a  human  victim  in  some  cases  the  sufferings  of  people 
may  be  relieved  or  their  sins  atoned  for  ? 

Simaetha,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  the  second  Idyll 
of  Theocritus,  curses  her  faithless  lover  Delphis,  and  as 
she  melts  his  waxen  image  she  prays  that  he  too  may  melt. 
All  this  is  of  the  nature  of  Magic,  and  is  independent  of 
and  generally  more  primitive  than  Theology  or  Philosophy. 
Yet  it  interests  11s  because  it  points  to  a  firm  instinct  in 
early  man — to  which  I  have  already  alluded — the  instinct 
of  his  unity  and  continuity  with  the  rest  of  creation,  and 
of  a  common  life  so  close  that  his  lightest  actions  may 
cause  a  far-reaching  reaction  in  the  world  outside. 

Man,  then,  independently  of  any  belief  in  gods,  may 
assist  the  arrival  of  Spring  by  magic  ceremonies.  If  you 
want  the  Vegetation  to  appear  you  must  have  rain  ;  and 
the  rain-maker  in  almost  all  primitive  tribes  has  been  a 
most  important  personage.  Generally  he  based  his  rites 
on  quite  fanciful  associations,  as  when  the  rain-maker 
among  the  Mandans  wore  a  raven’s  skin  on  his  head  (bird 
of  the  storm)  or  painted  his  shield  with  red  zigzags  of 
lightning  1  ;  but  partly,  no  doubt,  he  had  observed  actual 
facts,  or  had  had  the  knowledge  of  them  transmitted  to 
him — as,  for  instance  that  when  rain  is  impending  loud 
noises  will  bring  about  its  speedy  downfall,  a  fact  we 
moderns  have  had  occasion  to  notice  on  battlefields.  He 
had  observed  perhaps  that  in  a  storm  a  specially  loud 
clap  of  thunder  is  generally  followed  by  a  greatly  increased 
downpour  of  rain.  He  had  even  noticed  (a  thing  which 
I  have  often  verified  in  the  vicinity  of  Sheffield)  that  the 
copious  smoke  of  fires  will  generate  rain-clouds — and  so 
quite  naturally  he  concluded  that  it  was  his  smoking 
1  See  Gatlin's  North  American  Indians,  Letter  19. 


72 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


sacrifices  which  had  that  desirable  effect.  So  far  he  was 
on  the  track  of  elementary  Science.  And  so  he  made 
"  bull-roarers  ”  to  imitate  the  sound  of  wind  and  the 
blessed  rain-bringing  thunder,  or  clashed  great  bronze 
cymbals  together  with  the  same  object.  Bull-voices  and 
thunder-drums  and  the  clashing  of  cymbals  were  used  in 
this  connexion  by  the  Greeks,  and  are  mentioned  by 
Aeschylus  1  ;  but  the  bull-roarer,  in  the  form  of  a  rhombus 
of  wood  whirled  at  the  end  of  a  string,  seems  to  be  known, 
or  to  have  been  known,  all  over  the  world.  It  is  described 
with  some  care  by  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  in  his  Custom  and 
Myth  (pp.  29-44),  where  he  says  “it  is  found  always  as 
a  sacred  instrument  employed  in  religious  mysteries,  in 
New  Mexico,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  ancient  Greece, 
and  Africa/' 

Sometimes,  of  course,  the  rain-maker  was  successful ; 
but  of  the  inner  causes  of  rain  he  knew  next  to  nothing  ; 
he  was  more  ignorant  even  than  we  are  !  His  main  idea 
was  a  more  specially  '  magical '  one — namely,  that  the 
sound  itself  would  appeal  to  the  spirits  of  rain  and  thunder 
and  cause  them  to  give  a  response.  For  of  course  the 
thunder  (in  Hebrew  Bath-Kol,  "  the  daughter  of  the  Voice  ") 
was  everywhere  regarded  as  the  manifestation  of  a  spirit.2 3 
To  make  sounds  like  thunder  would  therefore  naturally 
call  the  attention  of  such  a  spirit;  or  he,  the  rain-maker, 
might  make  sounds  like  rain.  He  made  gourd-rattles 
(known  in  ever  so  many  parts  of  the  world)  in  which  he 
rattled  dried  seeds  or  small  pebbles  with  a  most  beguiling 
and  rain-like  insistence ;  or  sometimes,  like  the  priests 
of  Baal  in  the  Bible, 3  he  would  cut  himself  with  knives 


1  Themis,  p.  61. 

2  See  A.  Lang,  op.  cit.'.  “  The  muttering  of  the  thunder  is  said  to  be 
his  voice  calling  to  the  rain  to  fall  and  make  the  grass  grow  up  green." 
Such  are  the  very  words  of  Umbara,  the  minstrel  of  the  Tribe  (Aus* 
tralian). 

3  1  Kings  xviii. 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


73 


till  the  blood  fell  upon  the  ground  in  great  drops  suggestive 
of  an  oncoming  thunder-shower.  “  In  Mexico  the  rain- 
god  was  propitiated  with  sacrifices  of  children.  If  the 
children  wept  and  shed  abundant  tears,  they  who  carried 
them  rejoiced,  being  convinced  that  rain  would  also  be 
abundant.”  1  Sometimes  he,  the  rain-maker,  would  whistle 
for  the  wind,  or,  like  the  Omaha  Indians,  flap  his  blankets 
for  the  same  purpose. 

In  the  ancient  myth  of  Demeter  and  Persephone — 
which  has  been  adopted  by  so  many  peoples  under  so 
many  forms — Demeter  the  Earth-mother  loses  her  daughter 
Persephone  (who  represents  of  course  the  Vegetation), 
carried  down  into  the  underworld  by  the  evil  powers  of 
Darkness  and  Winter.  And  in  Greece  there  was  a  yearly 
ceremonial  and  ritual  of  magic  for  the  purpose  of  restoring 
the  lost  one  and  bringing  her  back  to  the  world  again. 
Women  carried  certain  charms,  "  fir-cones  and  snakes 
and  unnameable  objects  made  of  paste,  to  ensure  fertility  ; 
there  was  a  sacrifice  of  pigs,  who  were  thrown  into  a  deep 
cleft  of  the  earth,  and  their  remains  afterwards  collected 
and  scattered  as  a  charm  over  the  fields.” 2  Fir-cones 
and  snakes  from  their  very  forms  were  emblems  of  male 
fertility  ;  snakes,  too,  from  their  habit  of  gliding  out  of 
their  own  skins  with  renewed  brightness  and  colour  were 
suggestive  of  resurrection  and  re-vivification ;  pigs  and 
sows  by  their  exceeding  fruitfulness  would  in  their  hour 
of  sacrifice  remind  old  mother  Earth  of  what  was  expected 
from  her !  Moreover,  no  doubt  it  had  been  observed 
that  the  scattering  of  dead  flesh  over  the  ground  or  mixed 
with  the  seed,  did  bless  the  ground  to  greater  fertility  ; 
and  so  by  a  strange  mixture  of  primitive  observation  with 
a  certain  child-like  belief  that  by  means  of  symbols  and 

1  Quoted  from  Sahagun  II,  2,  3  by  A.  Lang  in  Myth,  Ritual  and 
Religion,  vol.  ii,  p.  102. 

2  See  Gilbert  Murray’s  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  p.  29. 


74 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


suggestions  Nature  could  be  appealed  to  and  induced  to 
answer  to  the  desires  and  needs  of  her  children  this  sort 
of  ceremonial  Magic  arose.  It  was  not  exactly  Science, 
and  it  was  not  exactly  Religion  ;  but  it  was  a  naive,  and 
perhaps  not  altogether  mistaken,  sense  of  the  bond  between 
Nature  and  Man. 

For  we  can  perceive  that  earliest  man  was  not  yet  con¬ 
sciously  differentiated  from  Nature'.  Not  only  do  we  see 
that  the  tribal  life  was  so  strong  that  the  individual  seldom 
regarded  himself  as  different  or  separate  or  opposed  to 
the  rest  of  the  tribe  ;  but  that  something  of  the  same 
kind  was  true  with  regard  to  his  relation  to  the  Animals 
and  to  Nature  at  large.  This  outer  world  was  part  of 
himself,  was  also  himself.  His  sub-conscious  sense  of 
unity  was  so  great  that  it  largely  dominated  his  life.  That 
brain-cleverness  and  brain-activity  which  causes  modern 
man  to  perceive  such  a  gulf  between  him  and  the  animals, 
or  between  himself  and  Nature,  did  not  exist  in  the  early 
man.  Hence  it  was  no  difficulty  to  him  to  believe  that 
he  was  a  Bear  or  an  Emu.  Sub-consciously  he  was  wiser 
than  we  are.  He  knew  that  he  was  a  bear  or  an  emu,  or 
any  other  such  animal  as  his  totem-creed  led  him  to  fix 
his  mind  upon.  Hence  we  find  that  a  familiarity  and 
common  consent  existed  between  primitive  man  and  many 
of  his  companion  animals  such  as  has  been  lost  or  much 
attenuated  in  modern  times.  Elisee  Reclus  in  his  very 
interesting  paper  La  Grande  Famille  1  gives  support  to  the 
idea  that  the  so-called  domestication  of  animals  did  not 
originally  arise  from  any  forcible  subjugation  of  them 
by  man,  but  from  a  natural  amity  with  them  which  grew 
up  in  the  beginning  from  common  interests,  pursuits  and 
affections.  Thus  the  chetah  of  India  (and  probably  the 
puma  of  Brazil)  from  far-back  times  took  to  hunting  in 
the  company  of  his  two-legged  and  bow-and-arrow-armed 

1  Published  originally  in  Le  Magazine  Internationale,  January 
1896. 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


friend,  with  whom  he  divided  the  spoil.  W.  H.  Hudson  1 
declares  that  the  Puma,  wild  and  fierce  though  it  is,  and 
capable  of  killing  the  largest  game,  will  never  even  to-day 
attack  man,  but  wrhen  maltreated  by  the  latter  submits 
to  the  outrage,  unresisting,  with  mournful  cries  and  every 
sign  of  grief.  The  Llama,  though  domesticated  in  a  sense, 
has  never  allowed  the  domination  of  the  whip  or  the  bit, 
but  may  still  be  seen  walking  by  the  side  of  the  Brazilian 
peasant  and  carrying  his  burdens  in  a  kind  of  proud  com¬ 
panionship.  The  mutual  relations  of  Woman  and  the 
Cow,  or  of  Man  and  the  Horse  2  (also  the  Elephant)  reach 
so  far  into  the  past  that  their  origin  cannot  be  traced. 
The  Swallow  still  loves  to  make  its  home  under  the  cottage 
eaves  and  still  is  welcomed  by  the  inmates  as  the  bringer 
of  good  fortune.  Elisee  Reclus  assures  us  that  the  Dinka 
man  on  the  Nile  calls  to  certain  snakes  by  name  and  shares 
with  them  the  milk  of  his  cows. 

And  so  with  Nature.  The  communal  sense,  or  sub¬ 
conscious  perception,  which  made  primitive  men  feel  their 
unity  with  other  members  of  their  tribe,  and  their  obvious 
kinship  with  the  animals  around  them,  brought  them  also 
so  close  to  general  Nature  that  they  looked  upon  the  trees, 
the  vegetation,  the  rain,  the  warmth  of  the  sun,  as  part 
of  their  bodies,  part  of  themselves.  Conscious  differenti¬ 
ation  had  not  yet  set  in.  To  cause  rain  or  thunder  you 
had  to  make  rain-  or  thunder-like  noises  ;  to  encourage 
Vegetation  and  the  crops  to  leap  out  of  the  ground,  you 
had  to  leap  and  dance.  “  In  Swabia  and  among  the 
Transylvanian  Saxons  it  is  a  common  custom  (says  Dr. 
Frazer)  for  a  man  who  has  some  hemp  to  leap  high  in  the 
field  in  the  belief  that  this  will  make  the  hemp  grow  tall.”  3 

1  See  The  Naturalist  in  La  Plata .  ch.  ii. 

3  “  It  is  certain  that  the  primitive  Indo-European  reared  droves 
of  tame  or  half-tame  horses  for  generations,  if  not  centuries,  before 
it  ever  occurred  to  him  to  ride  or  drive  them  "  (F.  B.  Jevons,  Introd. 
to  Hist.  Religion,  p.  119). 

3  See  The  Golden  Bough,  i,  139  seq.  Also  Art  and  Ritual,  p.  31. 


76 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Native  May-pole  dances  and  Jacks  in  the  Green  have 
hardly  yet  died  out — even  in  this  most  civilized  England. 
The  bower  of  green  boughs,  the  music  of  pipes,  the  leaping 
and  the  twirling,  were  all  an  encouragement  to  the  arrival 
of  Spring,  and  an  expression  of  Sympathetic  Magic.  When 
you  felt  full  of  life  and  energy  and  virility  in  yourself  you 
naturally  leapt  and  danced,  so  why  should  you  not  sympa¬ 
thetically  do  this  for  the  energising  of  the  crops  ?  In 
every  country  of  the  world  the  vernal  season  and  the 
resurrection  of  the  Sun  has  been  greeted  with  dances  and 
the  sound  of  music.  But  if  you  wanted  success  in  hunting 
or  in  warfare  then  you  danced  before-hand  mimic  dances 
suggesting  the  successful  hunt  or  battle.  It  was  no  more 
than  our  children  do  to-day,  and  it  all  was,  and  is,  part 
of  a  natural-magic  tendency  in  human  thought. 

Let  me  pause  here  for  a  moment.  It  is  difficult  for  us 
with  our  academical  and  somewhat  school-boardy  minds 
to  enter  into  all  this,  and  to  understand  the  sense  of  (un¬ 
conscious  or  sub-conscious)  identification  with  the  world 
around  which  characterised  the  primitive  man — or  to 
look  upon  Nature  with  his  eyes.  A  Tree,  a  Snake,  a  Bull, 
an  Ear  of  Corn.  We  know  so  well  from  our  botany  and 
natural  history  books  what  these  things  are.  Why  should 
our  minds  dwell  on  them  any  longer  or  harbour  a  doubt 
as  to  our  perfect  comprehension  of  them  ? 

And  yet  (one  cannot  help  asking  the  question)  :  Has 
any  one  of  us  really  ever  seen  a  Tree  ?  I  certainly  do  not 
think  that  I  have — except  most  superficially.  That  very 
penetrating  observer  and  naturalist,  Henry  D.  Thoreau, 
tells  us  that  he  would  often  make  an  appointment  to  visit 
a  certain  tree,  miles  away — but  what  or  whom  he  saw 
when  he  got  there,  he  does  not  say.  Walt  Whitman,  also 
a  keen  observer,  speaks  of  a  tulip-tree  near  which  he  some¬ 
times  sat — “  the  Apollo  of  the  woods — tall  and  graceful, 
yet  robust  and  sinewy,  inimitable  in  hang  of  foliage  and 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


77 


throwing-out  of  limb  ;  as  if  the  beauteous,  vital,  leafy 
creature  could  walk,  if  it  only  would  ”  ;  and  mentions  that 
in  a  dream-trance  he  actually  once  saw  his  “  favorite  trees 
step  out  and  promenade  up,  down  and  around,  very 
curiously  ”  1  Once  the  present  writer  seemed  to  have  a 
partial  vision  of  a  tree.  It  was  a  beech,  standing  somewhat 
isolated,  and  still  leafless  in  quite  early  Spring.  Suddenly 
I  was  aware  of  its  skyward-reaching  arms  and  up-turned 
finger-tips,  as  if  some  vivid  life  (or  electricity)  was  streaming 
through  them  far  into  the  spaces  of  heaven,  and  of  its 
roots  plunged  in  the  earth  and  drawing  the  same  energies 
from  below.  The  day  was  quite  still  and  there  was  no 
movement  in  the  branches,  but  in  that  moment  the  tree 
was  no  longer  a  separate  or  separable  organism,  but  a  vast 
being  ramifying  far  into  space,  sharing  and  uniting  the 
life  of  Earth  and  Sky,  and  full  of  a  most  amazing- 
activity. 

The  reader  of  this  will  probably  have  had  some  similar 
experiences.  Perhaps  he  will  have  seen  a  full-foliaged 
Lombardy  poplar  swaying  in  half  a  gale  in  June — the 
wind  and  the  sun  streaming  over  every  little  twig  and 
leaf,  the  tree  throwing  out  its  branches  in  a  kind  of 
ecstasy  and  bathing  them  in  the  passionately  boisterous 
caresses  of  its  two  visitants  ;  or  he  will  have  heard  the 
deep  glad  murmur  of  some  huge  sycamore  with  ripening 
seed  clusters  when  after  weeks  of  drought  the  steady  warm 
rain  brings  relief  to  its  thirst ;  and  he  will  have  known  that 
these  creatures  are  but  likenesses  of  himself,  intimately 
and  deeply-related  to  him  in  their  love  and  hunger  longing, 
and,  like  himself  too,  unfathomed  and  unfathomable. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  credit  early  man  with  conscious 
speculations  like  these,  belonging  more  properly  to  the 
twentieth  century  ;  yet  it  is  incontrovertible,  I  think,  that 
in  some  ways  the  primitive  peoples,  with  their  swift  sub¬ 
conscious  intuitions  and  their  minds  unclouded  by  mere 
1  Specimen  Days ,  1882-3  Edition,  p.  m. 


78 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


book  knowledge,  perceived  truths  to  which  we  modems 
are  blind.  Like  the  animals  they  arrived  at  their  per¬ 
ceptions  without  (individual)  brain  effort ;  they  knew 
things  without  thinking.  When  they  did  think  of  course 
they  went  wrong.  Their  budding  science  easily  went 
astray.  Religion  with  them  had  as  yet  taken  no  definite 
shape  ;  science  was  equally  protoplasmic  ;  and  all  they 
had  was  a  queer  jumble  of  the  two  in  the  form  of  Magic. 
When  at  a  later  time  Science  gradually  defined  its  outlook 
and  its  observations,  and  Religion,  from  being  a  vague 
subconscious  feeling,  took  clear  shape  in  the  form  of  gods 
and  creeds,  then  mankind  gradually  emerged  into  the 
stage  of  evolution  in  which  we  now  are.  Our  scientific 
laws  and  doctrines  are  of  course  only  temporary  formulae, 
and  so  also  are  the  gods  and  the  creeds  of  our  own  and 
other  religions ;  but  these  things,  with  their  set  and 
angular  outlines,  have  served  in  the  past  and  will  serve 
in  the  future  as  stepping-stomes  towards  another  kind 
of  knowledge  of  which  at  present  we  only  dream,  and 
will  lead  us  on  to  a  renewed  power  of  perception  which 
again  will  not  be  the  laborious  product  of  thought  but  a 
direct  and  instantaneous  intuition  like  that  of  the  animals 
— and  the  angels. 

To  return  to  our  Tree.  Though  primitive  man  did  not 
speculate  in  modern  style  on  these  things,  I  yet  have  no 
reasonable  doubt  that  he  felt  (and  feels ,  in  those  cases 
where  we  can  still  trace  the  workings  of  his  mind)  his 
essential  relationship  to  the  creatures  of  the  forest  more 
intimately,  if  less  analytically,  than  we  do  to-day. 
If  the  animals  with  all  their  wonderful  gifts  are  (as  we 
readily  admit)  a  veritable  part  of  Nature — so  that  they 
live  and  move  and  have  their  being  more  or  less  submerged 
in  the  spirit  of  the  great  world  around  them — then  Man, 
when  he  first  began  to  differentiate  himself  from  them, 
must  for  a  long  time  have  remained  in  this  subconscious 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


T9 


unity,  becoming  only  distinctly  conscious  of  it  when  he 
was  already  beginning  to  lose  it.  That  early  dawn  of 
distinct  consciousness  corresponded  to  the  period  of  belief 
in  Magic.  In  that  first  mystic  illumination  almost  every 
object  was  invested  with  a  halo  of  mystery  or  terror  or 
adoration.  Things  were  either  tabu ,  in  which  case  they 
were  dangerous,  and  often  not  to  be  touched  or  even  looked 
upon — or  they  were  overflowing  with  magic  grace  and 
influence,  in  which  case  they  were  holy,  and  any  rite  which 
released  their  influence  was  also  holy.  William  Blake, 
that  modern  prophetic  child,  beheld  a  Tree  full  of  angels  ; 
the  Central  Australian  native  believes  certain  bushes  to 
be  the  abode  of  spirits  which  leap  into  the  bodies  of  passing 
women  and  are  the  cause  of  the  conception  of  children  ; 
Moses  saw  in  the  desert  a  bush  (perhaps  the  mimosa)  like 
a  flame  of  fire,  with  Jehovah  dwelling  in  the  midst  of  it, 
and  he  put  off  his  shoes  for  he  felt  that  the  place  was  holy  ; 
Osiris  was  at  times  regarded  as  a  Tree-spirit 1  ;  and  in 
inscriptions  is  referred  to  as  “  the  solitary  one  in  the 
acacia  ” — which  reminds  us  curiously  of  the  "  burning 
bush.”  The  same  is  true  of  others  of  the  gods ;  in  the  old 
Norse  mythology  Ygdrasil  was  the  great  branching  World- 
Ash,  abode  of  the  soul  of  the  universe  ;  the  Peepul  or  Bo- 
tree  in  India  is  very  sacred  and  must  on  no  account  be  cut 
down,  seeing  that  gods  and  spirits  dwell  among  its  branches. 
It  is  of  the  nature  of  an  Aspen,  and  of  little  or  no  practical 
use,-  but  so  holy  that  the  poorest  peasant  will  not  disturb 
it.  The  Burmese  believe  the  things  of  nature,  but  especially 
the  trees,  to  be  the  abode  of  spirits.  “  To  the  Burman 
of  to-day,  not  less  than  to  the  Greek  of  long  ago,  all  nature 
is  alive.  The  forest  and  the  river  and  the  mountains  are 
full  of  spirits,  whom  the  Burmans  call  Nats.  There  are 
all  kinds  of  Nats,  good  and  bad,  great  and  little,  male  and 
female,  now  living  round  about  us.  Some  of  them  live 

1  The  Golden  Bough,  iv,  339. 

3  Though  its  sap  is  said  to  contain  caoutchouc. 


80 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


in  the  trees,  especially  in  the  huge  figtree  that  shades 
half-an-acre  without  the  village  ;  or  among  the  fern-like 
fronds  of  the  tamarind."  1 2 3 

There  are  also  in  India  and  elsewhere  popular  rites  of 
marriage  of  women  (and  men)  to  Trees ;  which  suggest 
that  trees  were  regarded  as  very  near  akin  to  human 
beings !  The  Golden  Bough 3  mentions  many  of  these, 
including  the  idea  that  some  trees  are  male  and  others 
female.  The  well-known  Assyrian  emblem  of  a  Pine 
cone  being  presented  by  a  priest  to  a  Palm-tree  is  supposed 
by  E.  B.  Tylor  to  symbolise  fertilisation — the  Pine  cone 
being  masculine  and  the  Palm  feminine.  The  ceremony 
of  the  god  Krishna’s  marriage  to  a  Basil  plant  is  still  cele¬ 
brated  in  India  down  to  the  present  day ;  and  certain 
trees  are  clasped  and  hugged  by  pregnant  women — the 
idea  no  doubt  being  that  they  bestow  fertility  on  those 
who  embrace  them.  In  other  cases  apparently  it  is  the 
trees  which  are  benefited,  since  it  is  said  that  men  some¬ 
times  go  naked  into  the  Clove  plantations  at  night  in  order 
by  a  sort  of  sexual  intercourse  to  fertilise  them.3 

One  might  go  on  multiplying  examples  in  this  direction 
quite  indefinitely.  There  is  no  end  to  them.  They  all 
indicate — what  was  instinctively  felt  by  early  man,  and 
is  perfectly  obvious  to  all  to-day  who  are  not  blinded  by 
‘  civilisation  ’  (and  Herbert  Spencer !)  that  the  world 
outside  us  is  really  most  deeply  akin  to  ourselves,  that 
it  is  not  dead  and  senseless  but  intensely  alive  and  instinct 
with  feeling  and  intelligence  resembling  our  own.  It  is 
this  perception,  this  conviction  of  our  essential  unity  with 
the  whole  of  creation,  which  lay  from  the  first  at  the  base 
of  all  Religion  ;  yet  at  first,  as  I  have  said,  was  hardly  a 
conscious  perception.  Only  later,  when  it  gradually  became 

1  The  Soul  of  a  People,  by  H.  Fielding  (1902),  p.  250. 

2  Vol.  i,  p.  40,  vol.  ii,  pp.  24  sq. 

3  Ibid.,  vol.  ii,  p.  98. 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


81 


more  conscious,  did  it  evolve  itself  into  the  definite  forms 
of  the  gods  and  the  creeds — but  of  that  process  I  will  speak 
more  in  detail  presently. 

The  Tree  therefore  was  a  most  intimate  presence  to  the 
Man.  It  grew  in  the  very  midst  of  his  Garden  of  Eden. 
It  had  a  magical  virtue,  which  his  tentative  science  could 
only  explain  by  chance  analogies  and  assimilations. 
Attractive  and  beloved  and  worshiped  by  reason  of  its 
many  gifts  to  mankind — its  grateful  shelter,  its  abounding 
fruits,  its  timber,  and  other  invaluable  products — why 
should  it  not  become  the  natural  emblem  of  the  female, 
to  whom  through  sex  man’s  worship  is  ever  drawn  ?  If 
the  Snake  has  an  unmistakable  resemblance  to  the  male 
organ  in  its  active  state,  the  foliage  of  the  tree  or  bush 
is  equally  remindful  of  the  female.  What  more  clear 
than  that  the  conjunction  of  Tree  and  Serpent  is  the  ful¬ 
filment  in  nature  of  that  sex-mystery  which  is  so  potent 
in  the  life  of  man  and  the  animals  ?  and  that  the  magic 
ritual  most  obviously  fitted  to  induce  fertility  in  the  tribe 
or  the  herds  (or  even  the  crops)  is  to  set  up  an  image  of 
the  Tree  and  the  Serpent  combined,  and  for  all  the  tribe- 
folk  in  common  to  worship  and  pay  it  reverence.  In  the 
Bible  with  more  or  less  veiled  sexual  significance  we  have 
this  combination  in  the  Eden-garden,  and  again  in  the 
brazen  Serpent  and  Pole  which  Moses  set  up  in  the  wilder¬ 
ness  (as  a  cure  for  the  fiery  serpents  of  lust)  ;  illustrations 
of  the  same  are  said  to  be  found  in  the  temples  of  Egypt 
and  of  South  India,  and  even  in  the  ancient  temples  of 
Central  America..1  In  the  myth  of  Hercules  the  golden 
apples  of  the  Hesperides  garden  are  guarded  by  a  dragon. 
The  Etruscans,  the  Persians  and  the  Babylonians  had 
also  legends  of  the  Fall  of  man  through  a  serpent  tempting 
him  to  taste  of  the  fruit  of  a  holy  Tree.  And  De  Gubernatis,2 

1  See  Ancient  Pagan  and  Modern  Christian  Symbolism,  by  Thomas 
Inman  (Triibner,  1874),  p.  55. 

2  Zoological  Mythology,  vol.  ii,  pp.  410  sq. 

6 


82 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


pointing  out  the  phallic  meaning  of  these  stories,  says 
“  the  legends  concerning  the  tree  of  golden  apples  or  figs 
which  yields  honey  or  ambrosia,  guarded  by  dragons, 
in  which  the  life,  the  fortune,  the  glory,  the  strength  and 
the  riches  of  the  hero  have  their  beginning,  are  numerous 
among  every  people  of  Aryan  origin  :  in  India,  Persia, 
Russia,  Poland,  Sweden,  Germany,  Greece  and  Italy. ” 

Thus  we  see  the  natural-magic  tendency  of  the  human 
mind  asserting  itself.  To  some  of  us  indeed  this  tendency 
is  even  greater  in  the  case  of  the  Snake  than  in  that  of  the 
Tree.  W.  H.  Hudson,  in  Far  Away  and  Long  Ago,  speaks 
of  “  that  sense  of  something  supernatural  in  the  serpent, 
wrhich  appears  to  have  been  universal  among  peoples  in 
a  primitive  state  of  culture,  and  still  survives  in 
some  barbarous  or  semi-barbarous  countries.”  The 
fascination  of  the  Snake — the  fascination  of  its  mysteriously 
gliding  movement,  of  its  vivid  energy,  its  glittering  eye, 
its  intensity  of  life,  combined  with  its  fatal  dart  of  Death 
— is  a  thing  felt  even  more  by  women  than  by  men — and 
for  a  reason  (from  what  we  have  already  said)  not  far  to 
seek.  It  was  the  Woman  who  in  the  story  of  the  Fall 
was  the  first  to  listen  to  its  suggestions.  No  wonder  that, 
as  Professor  Murray  says,1  the  Greeks  worshiped  a  gigantic 
Snake  (Meilichios)  the  lord  of  Death  and  Life,  with  cere¬ 
monies  of  appeasement,  and  sacrifices,  long  before  they 
arrived  at  the  worship  of  Zeus  and  the  Olympian  gods. 

Or  let  us  take  the  example  of  an  Ear  of  Corn.  Some 
people  wonder — hearing  nowadays  that  the  folk  of  old 
used  to  worship  a  Corn-spirit  or  Corn-god — wonder  that 
any  human  beings  could  have  been  so  foolish.  But  probably 
the  good  people  who  wonder  thus  have  never  really  looked 
(with  their  town-dazed  eyes)  at  a  growing  spike  of  wheat.  3 

1  Four  Stages  of  Greek  Religion,  p.  28. 

a  Even  the  thrice-learned  Dr.  Farnell  quotes  apparently  with 
approval  the  scornful  words  of  Hippolytus,  who  (he  says)  “speaks 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


83 


Of  all  the  wonderful  things  in  Nature  I  hardly  know  any 
that  thrills  one  more  with  a  sense  of  wizardry  than  just  this 
very  thing — to  observe,  each  year,  this  disclosure  of  the  Ear 
within  the  Blade— -first  a  swelling  of  the  sheath,  then  a  trans¬ 
parency  and  a  whitey-green  face  within  a  hooded  shroud,  and 
then  the  perfect  spike  of  grain  disengaging  itself  and  spiring 
upward  towards  the  sky — “  the  resurrection  of  the  wheat 
with  pale  visage  appearing  out  of  the  ground.” 

If  this  spectacle  amazes  one  to-day,  what  emotions  must 
it  not  have  aroused  in  the  breasts  of  the  earlier  folk,  whose 
outlook  on  the  world  was  so  much  more  direct  than  ours 
• — more  ‘  animistic  *  if  you  like  !  What  wonderment,  what 
gratitude,  what  deliverance  from  fear  (of  starvation),  what 
certainty  that  this  being  who  had  been  ruthlessly  cut 
down  and  sacrificed  last  year  for  human  food  had  indeed 
arisen  again  as  a  saviour  of  men,  what  readiness  to  make 
some  human  sacrifice  in  return,  both  as  an  acknowledg¬ 
ment  of  the  debt,  and  as  a  gift  of  something  which  would 
no  doubt  be  graciously  accepted  ! — (for  was  it  not  well 
known  that  where  blood  had  been  spilt  on  the  ground  the 
future  crop  was  so  much  the  more  generous  ?) — what 
readiness  to  adopt  some  magic  ritual  likely  to  propitiate 
the  unseen  power — even  though  the  outline  and  form  of 
the  latter  were  vague  and  uncertain  in  the  extreme  !  Dr. 
Frazer,  speaking  of  the  Egyptian  Osiris  as  one  out  of  many 
corn-gods  of  the  above  character,  says  1  :  “  The  primitive 

conception  of  him  as  the  corn-god  comes  clearly  out  in 
the  festival  of  his  death  and  resurrection,  which  was  cele¬ 
brated  in  the  month  of  Cholak,  and  at  a  later  period  in 


the  month  of  Athyr.  That  festival  appears  to  have  been 
essentially  a  festival  of  sowing,  which  properly  fell  at  the 
time  when  the  husbandman  actually  committed  the  seed 


of  the  Athenians  imitating  people  at  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  and 
showing  to  the  epoptae  (initiates)  that  great  and  marvelous  mystery 
of  perfect  revelation — in  solemn  silence — a  cut  cornstalk  (riOepiofuvov 
cTaxoi').’' — Cults  oj  the  Greek  States,  vol.  iii,  p.  182. 

1  The  Golden  Bough,  iv,  p.  330. 


84  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

to  the  earth.  On  that  occasion  an  effigy  of  the  corn-god, 
moulded  of  earth  and  corn,  was  buried  with  funeral  rites 
in  the  ground  in  order  that,  dying  there,  he  might  come 
to  life  again  with  the  new  crops.  The  ceremony  was  in 
fact  a  charm  to  ensure  the  growth  of  the  corn  by  sympa¬ 
thetic  magic,  and  we  may  conjecture  that  as  such  it  was 
practised  in  a  simple  form  by  every  Egyptian  farmer  on 
his  fields  long  before  it  was  adopted  and  transfigured  by 
the  priests  in  the  stately  ritual  of  the  temple/'  1 

The  magic  in  this  case  was  of  a  gentle  description  ;  the 
clay  image  of  Osiris  sprouting  all  over  with  the  young 
green  blade  was  pathetically  poetic ;  but,  as  has  been 
suggested,  bloodthirsty  ceremonies  were  also  common 
enough.  Human  sacrifices,  it  is  said,  had  at  one  time 
been  offered  at  the  grave  of  Osiris.  We  hear  that  the 
Indians  in  Ecuador  used  to  sacrifice  men’s  hearts  and 
pour  out  human  blood  on  their  fields  when  they  sowed 
them  ;  the  Pawnee  Indians  used  a  human  victim  the  same, 
allowing  his  blood  to  drop  on  the  seed-corn.  It  is  said 
that  in  Mexico  girls  were  sacrificed,  and  that  the  Mexicans 
wnuld  sometimes  grind  their  (male)  victim,  like  corn, 
between  two  stones.  (“  I’ll  grind  his  bones  to  make  me 
bread.”)  Among  the  Khonds  of  East  India — who  were 
particularly  given  to  this  kind  of  ritual — the  very  tears 
of  the  sufferer  w-ere  an  incitement  to  more  cruelties,  for 
tears  of  course  were  magic  for  Rain.2 3 

And  so  on.  We  have  referred  to  the  Bull  many  times, 
both  in  his  astronomical  aspect  as  pioneer  of  the  Spring- 
Sun,  and  in  his  more  direct  rdle  as  plougher  of  the  fields,  and 
provider  of  food  from  his  own  body.  “  The  tremendous 
mana  of  the  wild  bull,”  says  Gilbert  Murray,  “  occupies 
almost  half  the  stage  of  pre-Olympic  ritual.”  3  Even  to 
us  there  is  something  mesmeric  and  overwhelming  in  the 

1  See  ch.  xv  infra,  p.  5. 

2  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  vii,  “  The  Corn-Si)irit/'  pp.  236  sq. 

3  Four  Stages,  p.  34. 


FOOD  AND  VEGETATION  MAGIC 


85 


sense  of  this  animal’s  glory  of  strength  and  fury  and  sexual 
power.  No  wonder  the  primitives  worshiped  him,  or 
that  they  devised  rituals  which  should  convey  his  power 
and  vitality  by  mere  contact,  or  that  in  sacramental  feasts 
they  ate  his  flesh  and  drank  his  blood  as  a  magic  symbol 
and  means  of  salvation. 


VI 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 

It  is  perhaps  necessary,  at  the  commencement  of  this  chapter, 
to  say  a  few  more  words  about  the  nature  and  origin  of 
the  belief  in  Magic.  Magic  represented  on  one  side,  and 
clearly  enough,  the  beginnings  of  Religion — i.e.  the  in¬ 
stinctive  sense  of  Man's  inner  continuity  with  the  world 
around  him,  taking  shape  :  a  fanciful  shape  it  is  true,  but 
with  very  real  reaction  on  his  practical  life  and  feelings.1 2 
On  the  other  side  it  represented  the  beginnings  of  Science. 
It  was  his  first  attempt  not  merely  to  feel  but  to  under¬ 
stand  the  mystery  of  things. 

Inevitably  these  first  efforts  to  understand  were  very 
puerile,  very  superficial.  As  E.  B.  Tylor  says  3  of  primi¬ 
tive  folk  in  general,  “  they  mistook  an  imaginary  for  a 
real  connexion.”  And  he  instances  the  case  of  the  in¬ 
habitants  of  the  City  of  Ephesus,  w’ho  laid  down  a  rope, 
seven  furlongs  in  length,  from  the  City  to  the  temple  of 
Artemis,  in  order  to  place  the  former  under  the  protection 
of  the  latter  !  We  should  lay  down  a  telephone  wire,  and 
consider  that  we  had  established  a  much  more  efficient 
connexion ;  but  in  the  beginning,  and  quite  naturally, 
men,  like  children,  rely  on  surface  associations.  Among 
the  Dyaks  of  Borneo, 3  when  the  men  are  away  fighting, 

1  For  an  excellent  account  of  the  relation  of  Magic  to  Religion 
see  W.  McDougall,  Social  Psychology  (1908),  pp,  317-320. 

2  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  i,  p.  106. 

3  See  The  Golden  Bough,  i,  127. 

86 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS  87 

the  women  must  use  a  sort  of  telepathic  magic  in  order 
to  safeguard  them — that  is,  they  must  themselves  rise 
early  and  keep  awake  all  day  (lest  darkness  and  sleep 
should  give  advantage  to  the  enemy)  ;  they  must  not 
oil  their  hair  (lest  their  husbands  should  make  any  slips)  ; 
they  must  eat  sparingly  and  put  aside  rice  at  every  meal 
(so  that  the  men  may  not  want  for  food).  And  so  on. 
Similar  superstitions  are  common.  But  they  gradually 
lead  to  a  little  thought,  and  then  to  a  little  more,  and  so 
to  the  discovery  of  actual  and  proveable  influences. 
Perhaps  one  day  the  cord  connecting  the  temple  with 
Ephesus  was  drawn  tight  and  it  was  found  that  messages 
could  be,  by  tapping,  transmitted  along  it.  That  way 
lay  the  discovery  of  a  fact.  In  an  age  which  worshiped 
fertility,  whether  in  mankind  or  animals,  Twins  were 
ever  counted  especially  blest,  and  were  credited  with  a 
magic  power.  (The  Constellation  of  the  Twins  was  thought 
peculiarly  lucky.)  Perhaps  after  a  time  it  was  discovered 
that  twins  sometimes  run  in  families,  and  in  such  cases 
really  do  bring  fertility  with  them.  In  cattle  it  is  known 
nowadays  that  there  are  more  twins  of  the  female  sex 
than  of  the  male  sex.1 

Observations  of  this  kind  were  naturally  made  by  the 
ablest  members  of  the  tribe — who  were  in  all  probability 
the  medicine-men  and  wizards — and  brought  in  conse¬ 
quence  power  into  their  hands.  The  road  to  power  in 
fact — and  especially  was  this  the  case  in  societies  which 
had  not  yet  developed  wealth  and  property — lay  through 
Magic.  As  far  as  magic  represented  early  superstition 
and  religion  it  laid  hold  of  the  hearts  of  men — their  hopes 
and  fears  ;  as  far  as  it  represented  science  and  the  begin¬ 
nings  of  actual  knowledge,  it  inspired  their  minds  with 
a  sense  of  power,  and  gave  form  to  their  lives  and  customs. 
We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  early  magicians 

1  See  Evolution  of  Sex,  by  Geddes  and  Thomson  (1901),  p.  41, 
note. 


88 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  medicine-men  were  peculiarly  wicked  or  bent  on  mere 
self- aggrandisement — any  more  than  we  have  to  think 
the  same  of  the  average  country  vicar  or  country  doctor 
of  to-day.  They  were  merely  men  a  trifle  wiser  or  more 
instructed  than  their  flocks.  But  though  probably  in 
most  cases  their  original  intentions  were  decent  enough, 
they  were  not  proof  against  the  temptations  which  the 
possession  of  power  always  brings,  and  as  time  went  on 
they  became  liable  to  trade  more  and  more  upon  this 
power  for  their  own  advancement.  In  the  matter  of 
Religion  the  history  of  the  Christian  priesthood  through 
the  centuries  shows  sufficiently  to  what  misuse  such  power 
can  be  put ;  and  in  the  matter  of  Science  it  is  a  warning 
to  us  of  the  dangers  attending  the  formation  of  a  scientific 
priesthood,  such  as  we  see  growing  up  around  us  to-day. 
In  both  cases— whether  Science  or  Religion — vanity, 
personal  ambition,  lust  of  domination  and  a  hundred  other 
vices,  unless  corrected  by  a  real  devotion  to  the  public 
good,  may  easily  bring  as  many  evils  in  their  train  as  those 
they  profess  to  cure. 

The  Medicine-man,  or  Wizard,  or  Magician,  or  Priest, 
slowly  but  necessarily  gathered  power  into  his  hands,  and 
there  is  much  evidence  to  show  that  in  the  case  of  many 
tribes  at  any  rate,  it  was  he  who  became  ultimate  chief 
and  leader  and  laid  the  foundations  of  Kingship.  The 
Basileus  was  always  a  sacred  personality,  and  often  united 
in  himself  as  head  of  the  clan  the  offices  of  chief  in  warfare 
and  leader  in  priestly  rites — like  Agamemnon  in  Homer, 
or  Saul  or  David  in  the  Bible.  As  a  magician  he  had 
influence  over  the  fertility  of  the  earth  and,  like  the  blame¬ 
less  king  in  the  Odyssey,  under  his  sway 

“  the  dark  earth  beareth  in  season 
Barley  and  wheat,  and  the  trees  are  laden  with  fruitage,  and 
alway 

Yean  unfailing  the  flocks,  and  the  sea  gives  fish  in  abun¬ 
dance.”  1 

1  Odyssey  xix,  109  sq.  Translation  by  H.  B.  Cotterill. 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 


89 


As  a  magician  too  he  was  trusted  for  success  in  warfare  ; 
and  Schoolcraft,  in  a  passage  quoted  by  Andrew  Lang,1 
says  of  the  Dacotah  Indians  “  the  war-chief  who  leads 
the  party  to  war  is  always  one  of  these  medicine-men.” 
This  connexion,  however,  by  which  the  magician  is  trans¬ 
formed  into  the  king  has  been  abundantly  studied,  and 
need  not  be  further  dwelt  upon  here. 

And  what  of  the  transformation  of  the  king  into  a  god — 
or  of  the  Magician  or  Priest  directly  into  the  same  ? 
Perhaps  in  order  to  appreciate  this,  one  must  make  a 
further  digression. 

For  the  early  peoples  there  were,  as  it  would  appear, 
two  main  objects  in  life  :  (i)  to  promote  fertility  in  cattle 
and  crops,  for  food  ;  and  (2)  to  placate  or  ward  off  Death  ; 
and  it  seemed  very  obvious — even  before  any  distinct 
figures  of  gods,  or  any  idea  of  prayer,  had  arisen — to  attain 
these  objects  by  magic  ritual.  The  rites  of  Baptism,  of 
Initiation  (or  Confirmation)  and  the  many  ceremonies 
of  a  Second  Birth,  which  we  associate  with  fully-formed 
religions,  did  belong  also  to  the  age  of  Magic  ;  and  they 
all  implied  a  belief  in  some  kind  of  re-incarnation — in  a 
life  going  forward  continually  and  being  renewed  in  birth 
again  and  again.  It  is  curious  that  we  find  such  a  belief 
among  the  lowest  savages  even  to-day.  Dr.  Frazer, 
speaking  of  the  Central  Australian  tribes,  says  the  belief 
is  firmly  rooted  among  them  “  that  the  human  soul  under¬ 
goes  an  endless  series  of  re-incarnations — the  living  men 
and  women  of  one  generation  being  nothing  but  the  spirits 
of  their  ancestors  come  to  life  again,  and  destined  them¬ 
selves  to  be  reborn  in  the  persons  of  their  descendants. 
During  the  interval  between  two  re-incarnations  the  souls 
five  in  their  nanja  spots,  or  local  totem-centres,  which 
are  always  natural  objects  such  as  trees  or  rocks.  Each 
totem-clan  has  a  number  of  such  totem-centres  scattered 
over  the  country.  There  the  souls  of  the  dead  men  and 
1  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion ,  vol.  i,  p.  113. 


90 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


women  of  the  totem,  but  no  others,  congregate,  and  are 
born  again  in  human  form  when  a  favorable  opportunity 
presents  itself/’  1 

And  what  the  early  people  believed  of  the  human  spirit, 
they  believed  of  the  corn-spirits  and  the  tree  and  vegetation 
spirits  also.  At  the-  great  Spring-ritual  among  the  primi¬ 
tive  Greeks  “  the  tribe  and  the  growing  earth  were 
renovated  together  :  the  earth  arises  afresh  from  her  dead 
seeds,  the  tribe  from  its  dead  ancestors/’  And  the  whole 
process  projects  itself  in  the  idea  of  a  spirit  of  the  year, 
who  “  in  the  first  stage  is  living,  then  dies  with  each  year, 
and  thirdly  rises  again  from  the  dead,  raising  the  whole 
dead  world  with  him.  The  Greeks  called  him  in  this  stage 
'  The  Third  One  ’  [ Tritos  Soter ]  or  the  *  Saviour  ’  ;  arid 
the  renovation  ceremonies  were  accompanied  by  a  casting- 
off  of  the  old  year,  the  old  garments,  and  everything  that 
is  polluted  by  the  infection  of  death.”  2 3  Thus  the  multi¬ 
plication  of  the  crops  and  the  renovation  of  the  tribe,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  evasion  and  placation  of  death, 
were  all  assured  by  similar  rites  and  befitting  ceiemonial 
magic.  3 

In  all  these  cases,  and  many  others  that  I  have  not 
mentioned — of  the  magical  worship  of  Bulls  and  Bears 
and  Rams  and  Cats  and  Emus  and  Kangaroos,  of  Trees 
and  Snakes,  of  Sun  and  Moon  and  Stars,  and  the  spirit  of 
the  Corn  in  its  yearly  and  miraculous  resurrection  out  of 
the  ground — there  is  still  the  same  idea  or  moving  inspir¬ 
ation,  the  sense  mentioned  in  the  foregoing  chapter,  the 
feeling  (hardly  yet  conscious  of  its  own  meaning)  of 

1  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  i,  p.  96. 

3  Gilbert  Murray,  Four  Stages,  p.  46. 

3  It  is  interesting  to  find,  with  regard  to  the  renovation  of  the 
tribe,  that  among  the  Central  Australians  the  foreskins  or  male 
members  of  those  who  died  wrere  deposited  in  the  above-mentioned 
nanja  spots — the  idea  evidently  being  that  like  the  seeds  of  the  corn 
the  seeds  of  the  human  crop  must  be  carefully  and  ceremonially 
preserved  for  their  re-incamation. 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 


91 


intimate  relationship  and  unity  with  all  this  outer  world, 
the  instinctive  conviction  that  the  world  can  be  swayed 
by  the  spirit  of  Man,  if  the  man  can  only  find  the  right 
ritual,  the  right  wrord,  the  right  spell,  wherewith  to  move 
it.  An  aura  of  emotion  surrounded  everything — of  terror, 
of  tabu,  of  fascination,  of  desire.  The  world,  to  these 
people,  was  transparent  vnth  presences  related  to  them¬ 
selves  ;  and  though  hunger  and  sex  may  have  been  the 
dominant  and  overwhelmingly  practical  needs  of  their 
life,  yet  their  outlook  on  the  w^orld  was  essentially  poetic 
and  imaginative. 

Moreover  it  will  be  seen  that  in  this  age  of  magic  and 
the  belief  in  spirits,  though  there  was  an  intense  sense  of 
every  thing  being  alive,  the  gods,  in  the  more  modern 
sense  of  the  world,  hardly  existed  1 — that  is,  there  was 
no  very  clear  vision,  to  these  people,  of  supra-mundane 
beings,  sitting  apart  and  ordaining  the  affairs  of  earth, 
as  it  wrere  from  a  distance.  Doubtless  this  conception 
was  slowdy  evolving,  but  it  wras  only  incipient.  For  the 
time  being — though  there  might  be  orders  and  degrees  of 
spirits  (and  of  gods) — every  such  bein£f  was  only  con¬ 
ceived  of,  and  could  only  be  conceived  of,  as  actually 
a  part  of  Nature,  dwelling  in  and  interlaced  with  some 
phenomenon  of  Earth  and  Sky,  and  having  no  separate 
existence. 

How  was  it  then,  it  will  be  asked,  that  the  belief  in 
separate  and  separable  gods  and  goddesses — each  with 
his  or  her  well-marked  outline  and  character  and  function, 
like  the  divinities  of  Greece,  or  of  India,  or  of  the  Egyptian 
or  Christian  religions,  ultimately  arose  ?  To  this  question 
Jane  Harrison  (in  her  Themis  and  other  books)  gives  an 
ingenious  answer,  which  as  it  chimes  in  with  my  own 
speculations  (in  the  Art  of  Creation  and  elsewhere)  I  am 
inclined  to  adopt.  It  is  that  the  figures  of  the  supra- 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  evolution  of  religion  out  of  magic,  see 
Westermarck’s  Origin  of  Moral  Ideas,  ch.  47. 


92 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


natural  gods  arose  from  a  process  in  the  human  mind 
similar  to  that  which  the  photographer  adopts  when  by 
photographing  a  number  of  faces  on  the  same  plate,  and 
so  superposing  their  images  on  one  another,  he  produces 
a  so-called  "  composite  ”  photograph  or  image.  Thus,  in 
the  photographic  sphere,  the  portraits  of  a  lot  of  members 
of  the  same  family  superposed  upon  one  another  may 
produce  a  composite  image  or  ideal  of  that  family  type, 
or  the  portraits  of  a  number  of  Aztecs  or  of  a  number  of 
Apache  Indians  the  ideals  respectively  of  the  Aztec  or  of 
the  Apache  types.  And  so  in  the  mental  sphere  of  each 
member  of  a  tribe  the  many  images  of  the  well-known 
Warriors  or  Priests  or  wise  and  gracious  Women  of  that 
tribe  did  inevitably  combine  at  last  to  composite  figures 
of  gods  and  goddesses — on  whom  the  enthusiasm  and 
adoration  of  the  tribe  was  concentrated.1  Miss  Harrison 
has  ingeniously  suggested  how  the  leading  figures  in  the 
magic  rituals  of  the  past — being  the  figures  on  which  all 
eyes  would  be  concentrated  ;  and  whose  importance  would 
be  imprinted  on  every  mind — lent  themselves  to  this 
process.  The  suffering  Victim,  bound  and  scourged  and 
crucified,  recurring  year  after  year  as  the  centre-figure 
of  a  thousand  ritual  processions,  would  at  last  be  drama¬ 
tised  and  idealised  in  the  general  race-consciousness  into 
the  form  of  a  Suffering  God — a  Jesus  Christ  or  a  Dionysus 
or  Osiris — dismembered  or  crucified  for  the  salvation  of 
mankind.  The  Priest  or  Medicine-Man — or  rather  the 
succession  of  Priests  or  Medicine-Men — whose  figures 
would  recur  again  and  again  as  leaders  and  ordainers  of 
the  ceremonies,  would  be  glorified  at  last  into  the  composite- 
image  of  a  God  in  whom  were  concentrated  all  magic 
powers.  “  Recent  researches,”  says  Gilbert  Murray,  “  have 
shown  us  in  abundance  the  early  Greek  medicine-chiefs 
making  thunder  and  lightning  and  rain.”  Here  is  the 

1  See  The  Art  of  Creation,  ch.  viii,  “  The  Gods  as  Apparitions  of 
the  Race-Life." 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 


93 


germ  of  a  Zeus  or  a  Jupiter.  The  particular  medicine-man 
may  fail  ;  that  does  not  so  much  matter  ;  he  is  only  the 
individual  representative  of  the  glorified  and  composite 
being  who  exists  in  the  mind  of  the  tribe  (just  as  a  present- 
day  King  may  be  unworthy,  but  is  surrounded  all  the 
same  by  the  agelong  glamour  of  Royalty).  “  The  real 
©eos,  tremendous,  infallible,  is  somewhere  far  away,  hidden 
in  clouds  perhaps,  on  the  summit  of  some  inaccessible 
mountain.  If  the  mountain  is  once  climbed  the  god  will 
move  to  the  upper  sky.  The  medicine-chief  meanwhile 
stays  on  earth,  still  influential.  He  has  some  connexion 
with  the  great  god  more  intimate  than  that  of  other 
men  ...  he  knows  the  rules  for  approaching  him  and 
making  prayers  to  him/'  1  Thus  did  the  Medicine-man, 
or  Priest,  or  Magician  (for  these  are  but  three  names 
for  one  figure)  represent  one  step  in  the  evolution  of 
the  god. 

And  farther  back  still  in  the  evolutionary  process  we 
may  trace  (as  in  chapter  iv  above)  the  divinisation  or 
deification  of  four-footed  animals  and  birds  and  snakes 
and  trees  and  the  like,  from  the  personification  of  the 
collective  emotion  of  the  tribe  towards  these  creatures. 
For  people  whose  chief  food  was  bear-meat,  for  instance, 
whose  totem  was  a  bear,  and  who  believed  themselves 
descended  from  an  ursine  ancestor,  there  would  growT  up 
in  the  tribal  mind  an  image  surrounded  by  a  halo  of 
emotions — emotions  of  hungry  desire,  of  reverence,  fear, 
gratitude  and  so  forth — an  image  of  a  divine  Bear  in  whom 
they  lived  and  moved  and  had  their  being.  For  another 
tribe  or  group  in  whose  yearly  ritual  a  Bull  or  a  Lamb  or 
a  Kangaroo  played  a  leading  part  there  would  in  the  same 
way  spring  up  the  image  of  a  holy  bull,  a  divine  lamb,  or 
a  sacred  kangaroo.  Another  group  again  might  come 
to  worship  a  Serpent  as  its  presiding  genius,  or  a  particular 
kind  of  Tree,  simply  because  these  objects  were  and  had 

1  The  Four  Stages,  p.  140. 


94 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


been  for  centuries  prominent  factors  in  its  yearly  and 
seasonal  Magic.  As  Reinach  and  others  suggest,  it  was 
the  Taboo  (bred  by  Fear)  which  by  first  forbidding  contact 
with  the  totem-animal  or  priest  or  magician-chief  gradually 
invested  him  with  Awe  and  Divinity. 

According  to  this  theory  the  god — the  full-grown  god  in 
human  shape,  dwelling  apart  and  beyond  the  earth — did 
not  come  first,  but  was  a  late  and  more  finished  product 
of  evolution.  He  grew  up  by  degrees  and  out  of  the 
preceding  animal-worships  and  totem-systems.  And  this 
theory  is  much  supported  and  corroborated  by  the  fact 
that  in  a  vast  number  of  early  cults  the  gods  are  repre¬ 
sented  by  human  figures  with  animal  heads.  The  Egyptian 
religion  was  full  of  such  divinities — the  jackal -headed 
Anubis,  the  ram-headed  Ammon,  the  bull-fronted  Osiris, 
or  Muth,  queen  of  darkness,  clad  in  a  vulture's  skin  ;  Minos 
and  the  Minotaur  in  Crete  ;  in  Greece,  Athena  with  an 
owl’s  head,  or  Herakles  masked  in  the  hide  and  jaws  of 
a  monstrous  lion.  What  could  be  more  obvious  than  that, 
following  on  the  tribal  worship  of  any  totem-animal,  the 
priest  or  medicine-man  or  actual  king  in  leading  the  magic 
ritual  should  don  the  skin  and  head  of  that  animal,  and 
wear  the  same  as  a  kind  of  mask — this  partly  in  order  to 
appear  to  the  people  as  the  true  representative  of  the 
totem,  and  partly  also  in  order  to  obtain  from  the  skin 
the  magic  virtues  and  mana  of  the  beast,  which  he  could 
then  duly  impart  to  the  crowd  ?  Zeus,  it  must  be  remem¬ 
bered,  wears  the  cagis,  or  goat-skin — said  to  be  the  hide 
of  the  goat  Amaltheia  who  suckled  him  in  his  infancy  ; 
there  are  a  number  of  legends  which  connected  the  Arcadian 
Artemis  with  the  worship  of  the  bear,  Apollo  with  the 
wolf,  and  so  forth.  And,  most  curious  as  showing  simil¬ 
arity  of  rites  between  the  Old  and  New  W'orlds,  there  are 
found  plenty  of  examples  of  the  wearing  of  beast-masks 
in  religious  processions  among  the  native  tribes  of  both 
North  and  South  America.  In  the  Atlas  of  Spix  and 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 


95 


Martins  (who  travelled  together  in  the  Amazonian  forests 
about  1820)  there  is  an  interesting  and  characteristic 
picture  of  the  men  (and  some  women)  of  the  tribe  of  the 
Tecunas  moving  in  procession  through  the  woods,  mostfy 
naked,  except  for  wearing  animal  heads  and  masks — 
the  masks  representing  Cranes  of  various  kinds,  Ducks, 
the  Opossum,  the  Jaguar,  the  Parrot,  etc.,  probably  sym¬ 
bolic  of  their  respective  clans. 

By  some  such  process  as  this,  it  may  fairly  be  supposed, 
the  forms  of  the  Gods  were  slowly  exhaled  from  the  actual 
figures  of  men  and  women,  of  youths  and  girls,  who  year 
after  year  took  part  in  the  ancient  rituals.  Just  as  the 
Oueen  of  the  May  or  Father  Christmas  with  us  are  idealised 
forms  derived  from  the  many  happy  maidens  or  white- 
bearded  old  men  who  took  leading  parts  in  the  May  or 
December  mummings  and  thus  gained  their  apotheosis 
in  our  literature  and  tradition— so  doubtless  Zeus  with 
his  thunderbolts  and  arrows  of  lightning  is  the  idealisation 
into  Heaven  of  the  Priestly  r'ain-maker  and  storm-con¬ 
troller  ;  Ares  the  god  of  War,  the  similar  idealisation  of 
the  leading  warrior  in  the  ritual  war-dance  preceding  an 
attack  on  a  neighboring  tribe  ;  and  Mercury  of  the  foot- 
running  Messenger  whose  swiftness  in  those  days  (devoid 
of  steam  or  electricity)  was  so  precious  a  tribal  possession. 

And  here  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  explanation 
of  the  genesis  of  the  gods  only  applies  to  the  shapes  and 
figures  of  the  various  deities.  It  does  not  apply  to  the 
genesis  of  the  widespread  belief  in  spirits  or  a  Great  Spirit 
generally ;  that,  as  I  think  will  become  clear,  has  quite 
another  source.  Some  people  have  jeered  at  the  ‘  animistic  ’ 
or  ‘  anthropomorphic  ’  tendency  of  primitive  man  in  his 
contemplation  of  the  forces  of  Nature  or  his  imaginations 
of  religion  and  the  gods.  With  a  land  of  superior  pity 
they  speak  of  “  the  poor  Indian  whose  untutored  mind 
sees  God  in  clouds  and  hears  him  in  the  wind.”  But  I 
must  confess  that  to  me  the  “  poor  Indian  ”  seems  on  the 


96 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


whole  to  show  more  good  sense  than  his  critics,  and  to 
have  aimed  his  rude  arrows  at  the  philosophic  mark  more 
successfully  than  a  vast  number  of  his  learned  and  scien¬ 
tific  successors.  A  consideration  of  what  we  have  said 
above  would  show  that  early  people  felt  their  unity  with 
Nature  so  deeply  and  intimately  that— like  the  animals 
themselves — they  did  not  think  consciously  or  theorise 
about  it.  It  was  just  their  life  to  be — like  the  beasts  of 
the  field  and  the  trees  of  the  forest — a  part  of  the  whole 
flux  of  things,  non-differentiated  so  to  speak.  What  more 
natural  or  indeed  more  logically  correct  than  for  them  to 
assume  (when  they  first  began  to  think  or  differentiate 
themselves)  that  these  other  creatures,  these  birds,  beasts 
and  plants,  and  even  the  sun  and  moon,  were  of  the  same 
blood  as  themselves,  their  first  cousins,  so  to  speak,  and 
having  the  same  interior  nature  ?  What  more  reasonable 
(if  indeed  they  credited  themselves  with  having  some  kind 
of  soul  or  spirit)  than  to  credit  these  other  creatures  with 
a  similar  soul  or  spirit  ?  Im  Thurn,  speaking  of  the  Guiana 
Indians,  says  that  for  them  “  the  whole  world  swarms  with 
beings.”  Surely  this  could  not  be  taken  to  indicate  an 
untutored  mind — unless  indeed  a  mind  untutored  in  the 
nonsense  of  the  Schools — but  rather  a  very  directly  per¬ 
ceptive  mind.  And  again  what  more  reasonable  (seeing 
that  these  people  themselves  were  in  the  animal  stage  of 
evolution)  than  that  they  should  pay  great  reverence  to 
some  ideal  animal — first  cousin  or  ancestor — who  played 
an  important  part  in  their  tribal  existence,  and  make  of 
this  animal  a  totem  emblem  and  a  symbol  of  their  common 
life? 

And,  further  still,  what  more  natural  than  that  when 
the  tribe  passed  to  some  degree  beyond  the  animal  stage 
and  began  to  realise  a  fife  more  intelligent  and  emotional 
— more  specially  human  in  fact — than  that  of  the  beasts 
of  the  field,  that  it  should  then  in  its  rituals  and  ceremonies 
throw  off  the  beast-mask  and  pay  reverence  to  the  interior 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 


97 


and  more  human  spirit.  Rising  to  a  more  enlightened 
consciousness  of  its  own  intimate  quality,  and  still  deeply 
penetrated  with  the  sense  of  its  kinship  to  external  nature, 
it  would  inevitably  and  perfectly  logically  credit  the  latter 
with  an  inner  life  and  intelligence,  more  distinctly  human 
than  before.  Its  religion  in  fact  would  become  more 
‘  anthropomorphic  *  instead  of  less  so  ;  and  one  sees  that 
this  is  a  process  that  is  inevitable  ;  and  inevitable  not¬ 
withstanding  a  certain  parenthesis  in  the  process,  due 
to  obvious  elements  in  our  *  Civilisation  *  and  to  the 
temporary  and  fallacious  domination  of  a  leaden-eyed 
so-called  ‘  Science/  According  to  this  view  the  true 
evolution  of  Religion  and  Man’s  outlook  on  the  world  has 
proceeded  not  by  the  denial  by  man  of  his  unity  with  the 
world,  but  by  his  seeing  and  understanding  that  unity 
more  deeply.  And  the  more  deeply  he  understands  him¬ 
self  the  more  certainly  he  will  recognise  in  the  external 
world  a  Being  or  beings  resembling  himself. 

W.  H.  Hudson — whose  mind  is  certainly  not  of  a 
quality  to  be  jeered  at — speaks  of  Animism  as  “  the  pro¬ 
jection  of  ourselves  into  nature  :  the  sense  and  apprehension 
of  an  intelligence  like  our  own,  but  more  powerful,  in  all 
visible  things  ”  ;  and  continues,  “  old  as  I  am  this  same 
primitive  faculty  which  manifested  itself  in  my  early 
boyhood,  still  persists,  and  in  those  early  years  was  so 
powerful  that  I  am  almost  afraid  to  say  how  deeply  I  was 
moved  by  it.”  1  Nor  will  it  be  quite  forgotten  that  Shelley 
once  said  : — 

The  moveless  pillar  of  a  mountain’s  weight 
Is  active  living  spirit.  Every  grain 
Is  sentient  both  in  unity  and  part, 

And  the  minutest  atom  comprehends 
A  world  of  loves  and  hatreds. 

The  tendency  to  animism  and  later  to  anthropomorphism 
1  Fay  Away  and  Long  Ago,  ch,  xiii,  p.  225. 

7 


98 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


is  I  say  inevitable,  and  perfectly  logical.  But  the  great 
value  of  the  work  done  by  some  of  those  investigators 
whom  I  have  quoted  has  been  to  show  that  among  quite 
primitive  people  (whose  interior  life  and  ‘  soul-sense  ’ 
was  only  very  feeble)  their  projections  of  intelligence  into 
Nature  were  correspondingly  feeble.  The  reflections  of 
themselves  projected  into  the  world  beyond  could  not 
reach  the  stature  of  eternal  ‘  gods,'  but  were  rather  of  the 
quality  of  ephemeral  phantoms  and  ghosts ;  and  the 
ceremonials  and  creeds  of  that  period  are  consequently 
more  properly  described  as  Magic  than  as  Religion.  There 
have  indeed  been  great  controversies  as  to  whether  there 
has  or  has  not  been,  in  the  course  of  religious  evolution, 
a  ^>re-animistic  stage.  Probably  of  course  human  evolu¬ 
tion  in  this  matter  must  have  been  perfectly  continuous 
from  stages  presenting  the  very  feeblest  or  an  absolutely 
deficient  animistic  sense  to  the  very  highest  manifestations 
of  anthropomorphism  ;  but  as  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
evidence  to  show  that  animals  (notably  dogs  and  horses) 
see  ghosts,  the  inquiry  ought  certainly  to  be  enlarged  so 
far  as  to  include  the  pre-human  species.  Anyhow  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  question  is  one  of  consciousness 
'-that  is,  of  how  far  and  to  what  degree  consciousness  of 
self  has  been  developed  in  the  animal  or  the  primitive  man 
or  the  civilised  man,  and  therefore  how  far  and  to  what 
degree  the  animal  or  human  creature  has  credited  the  out¬ 
side  world  with  a  similar  consciousness.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  whether  there  is  an  inner  life  and  s«6-consciousness 
common  to  all  these  creatures  of  the  earth  and  sky,  because 
that,  I  take  it,  is  a  fact  beyond  question  ;  they  all  emerge 
or  have  emerged  from  the  same  matrix,  and  are  rooted  in 
identity  ;  but  it  is  a  question  of  how  far  they  are  aware 
of  this,  and  how  far  by  separation  (which  is  the  genius 
of  evolution)  each  individual  creature  has  become  con¬ 
scious  of  the  interior  nature  both  of  itself  and  of  the  other 
creatures  and  of  the  great  whole  which  includes  them  all. 


99 


MAGICIANS,  KINGS  AND  GODS 

Finally,  and  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  let  me  say 
that  Anthropomorphism,  in  man’s  conception  of  the  gods, 
is  itself  of  course  only  a  stage  and  destined  to  pass  away! 
In  so  far,  that  is,  as  the  term  indicates  a  belief  in  divine 
beings  corresponding  to  our  present  conception  of  ourselves 
—that  is  as  separate  personalities  having  each  a  separate 
and  limited  character  and  function,  and  animated  by 
the  separatist  motives  of  ambition,  possession,  power 
vainglory,  superiority,  patronage,  self-greed,  self-satis¬ 
faction,  etc.  in  so  far  as  anthropomorphism  is  the  ex¬ 
pression  of  that  kind  of  belief  it  is  of  course  destined,  with 
the  illusion  from  which  it  springs,  to  pass  away.  When 
man  arrives  at  the  final  consciousness  in  which  the  idea 
of  such  a  self,  superior  or  inferior  or  in  any  way  antago¬ 
nistic  to  others,  ceases  to  operate,  then  he  will  return  to 
his  first  and  primal  condition,  and  will  cease  to  need  any 
special  religion  or  gods,  knowing  himself  and  all  his  fellows 
to  be  divine  and  the  origin  and  perfect  fruition  of  all. 


VII 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION  AND  REDEMPTION 

There  is  a  passage  in  Richard  Jefferies’  imperishably 
beautiful  book  The  Story  oj  my  Heart — a  passage  well- 
known  to  all  lovers  of  that  prose-poet — in  which  he  figures 
himself  standing  "  in  front  of  the  Royal  Exchange  where 
the  wide  pavement  reaches  out  like  a  promontory,”  and 
pondering  on  the  vast  crowd  and  the  mystery  of  life.  “  Is 
there  any  theory,  philosophy,  or  creed,”  he  says,  “  is  there 
any  system  of  culture,  any  formulated  method,  able  to 
meet  and  satisfy  each  separate  item  of  this  agitated  pool 
of  human  life  ?  By  which  they  may  be  guided,  by  which 
they  may  hope,  by  which  look  forward  ?  Not  a  mere 
illusion  of  the  craving  heart — something  real,  as  real  as 
the  solid  walls  of  fact  against  which,  like  seaweed,  they 
are  dashed  ;  something  to  give  each  separate  personality 
sunshine  and  a  flower  in  its  own  existence  now ;  some¬ 
thing  to  shape  this  million-handed  labour  to  an  end  and 
outcome  that  will  leave  more  sunshine  and  more  flowers 
to  those  who  must  succeed  ?  Something  real  now,  and 
not  in  the  spirit-land  ;  in  this  hour  now,  as  I  stand  and 
the  sun  burns.  .  .  .  Full  well  aware  that  all  has  failed, 
yet,  side  by  side  with  the  sadness  of  that  knowledge, 
there  lives  on  in  me  an  unquenchable  belief,  thought 

burning  like  the  sun,  that  there  is  yet  something  to  be 

100 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


101 


found.  ...  It  must  be  dragged  forth  by  the  might  of 
thought  from  the  immense  forces  of  the  universe/’ 

In  answer  to  this  passage  we  may  say  “  No — a  thousand 
times  No  !  there  is  no  theory,  philosophy,  creed,  system 
or  formulated  method  which  will  meet  or  ever  satisfy 
the  demand  of  each  separate  item  of  the  human  whirl¬ 
pool.”  And  happy  are  we  to  know  there  is  no  such  thing  ! 
How  terrible  if  one  of  these  bloodless  ‘  systems  ’  which 
strew  the  history  of  religion  and  philosophy  and  the  political 
and  social  paths  of  human  endeavour  had  been  found 
absolutely  correct  and  universally  applicable — so  that 
every  human  being  would  be  compelled  to  pass  through 
its  machine-like  maw,  every  personality  to  be  crushed 
under  its  Juggernath  wheels  !  No,  thank  Heaven  !  there 
is  no  theory  or  creed  or  system  ;  and  yet  there  is  some¬ 
thing — as  Jefferies  prophetically  felt  and  with  a  great 
longing  desired— that  can  satisfy  ;  and  that,  the  root  of 
all  religion,  has  been  hinted  at  in  the  last  chapter.  It 
is  the  consciousness  of  the  world-life  burning,  blazing,  deep 
down  within  us  :  it  is  the  Soul’s  intuition  of  its  roots  in 
Omnipresence  and  Eternity. 

The  gods  and  the  creeds  of  the  past,  as  shown  in  the 
last  chapter — whatever  they  may  have  been,  animistic 
or  anthropomorphic  or  transcendental,  whether  grossly 
brutish  or  serenely  ideal  and  abstract — are  essentially 
projections  of  the  human  mind  ;  and  no  doubt  those  who 
are  anxious  to  discredit  the  religious  impulse  generally 
will  catch  at  this,  saying  “  Yes,  they  are  mere  forms  and 
phantoms  of  the  mind,  ephemeral  dreams,  projected  on 
the  background  of  Nature,  and  having  no  real  substance 
or  solid  value.  The  history  of  Religion  (they  will  say) 
is  a  history  of  delusion  and  illusion  ;  why  waste  time  over 
it  ?  These  divine  grizzly  Bears  or  Aesculapian  Snakes, 
these  cat-faced  Pashts,  this  Isis,  queen  of  heaven,  and 
Astarte  and  Baal  and  Indra  and  Agni  and  Kali  and 
Demeter  and  the  Virgin  Mary  and  Apollo  and  Jesus  Christ 


102  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  Satan  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  are  only  shadows  cast 
outwards  onto  a  screen  ;  the  constitution  of  the  human 
mind  makes  them  all  tend  to  be  anthropomorphic  ;  but 
that  is  all ;  they  each  and  all  inevitably  pass  away.  Why 
waste  time  over  them  ?  ” 

And  this  is  in  a  sense  a  perfectly  fair  way  of  looking 
at  the  matter.  The  gods  and  creeds  are  only  projections 
of  the  human  mind.  But  all  the  same  it  misses,  does 
this  view,  the  essential  fact.  It  misses  the  fact  that  there 
is  no  shadow  without  a  fire,  that  the  very  existence  of 
a  shadow  argues  a  light  somewhere  (though  we  may  not 
directly  see  it)  as  well  as  the  existence  of  a  solid  form  which 
intercepts  that  light.  Deep,  deep  in  the  human  mind 
there  is  that  burning  blazing  light  of  the  world-conscious¬ 
ness — so  deep  indeed  that  the  vast  majority  of  individuals 
are  hardly  aware  of  its  existence.  Their  gaze  turned 
outwards  is  held  and  riveted  by  the  gigantic  figures  and 
processions  passing  across  their  sky ;  they  are  unaware 
that  the  latter  are  only  shadows — silhouettes  of  the  forms 
inhabiting  their  own  minds.1  The  vast  majority  of  people 
have  never  observed  their  own  minds ;  their  own  mental 
forms.  They  have  only  observed  the  reflections  cast 
by  these.  Thus  it  may  be  said,  in  this  matter,  that  there 
are  three  degrees  of  reality.  There  are  the  mere  shadows 
— the  least  real  and  most  evanescent ;  there  are  the  actual 
mental  outlines  of  humanity  (and  of  the  individual),  much 
more  real,  but  themselves  also  of  course  slowly  changing  ; 
and  most  real  of  all,  and  permanent,  there  is  the  light 
“  which  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world  ” 
— the  glorious  light  of  the  world-consciousness.  Of  this 
last  it  may  be  said  that  it  never  changes.  Every  thing 
is  known  to  it — even  the  very  impediments  to  its  shining. 
But  as  it  is  from  the  impediments  to  the  shining  of  a  light 
that  shadows  are  cast,  so  we  now  may  understand  that 

1  See,  iu  the  same  connexion,  Plato’s  allegory  of  the  Cave,  Republic, 
Book  vii. 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


103 


the  things  of  this  world  and  of  humanity,  though  real 
in  their  degree,  have  chiefly  a  kind  of  negative  value  ; 
they  are  opaquenesses,  clouds,  materialisms,  ignorances, 
and  the  inner  light  falling  upon  them  gradually  reveals 
their  negative  character  and  gradually  dissolves  them 
away  till  they  are  lost  in  the  extreme  and  eternal  Splendour. 

I  think  Jefferies,  when  he  asked  that  question  with  which 
I  have  begun  this  chapter,  was  in  some  sense  subcon¬ 
sciously,  if  not  quite  consciously,  aware  of  the  answer. 
His  frequent  references  to  the  burning  blazing  sun  through¬ 
out  The  Story  of  my  Heart  seem  to  be  an  indication  of  his 
real  deep-down  attitude  of  mind. 

The  shadow-figures  of  the  creeds  and  theogonies  pass 
away  truly  like  ephemeral  dreams  ;  but  to  say  that  time 
spent  in  their  study  is  wasted,  is  a  mistake,  for  they  have 
value  as  being  indications  of  things  much  more  real  than 
themselves,  namely,  of  the  stages  of  evolution  of  the  human 
mind.  The  fact  that  a  certain  god-figure,  however 
grotesque  and  queer,  or  a  certain  creed,  however  childish, 
cruel,  and  illogical,  held  sway  for  a  considerable  time  over 
the  hearts  of  men  in  any  corner  or  continent  of  the  world 
is  good  evidence  that  it  represented  a  real  formative  urge 
at  the  time  in  the  hearts  of  those  good  people,  and  a  definite 
stage  in  their  evolution  and  the  evolution  of  humanity. 
Certainly  it  was  destined  to  pass  away,  but  it  was  a  step, 
and  a  necessary  step  in  the  great  process ;  and  certainly 
it  was  opaque  and  brutish,  but  it  is  through  the  opaque 
things  of  the  world,  and  not  through  the  transparent, 
that  we  become  aware  of  the  light. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  give  instances  of  how  some 
early  rituals  and  creeds,  in  themselves  apparently  bar¬ 
barous  or  preposterous,  were  really  the  indications  of 
important  moral  and  social  conceptions  evolving  in  the 
heart  of  man.  Let  us  take,  first,  the  religious  customs 
connected  with  the  ideas  of  Sacrifice  and  of  Sin,  of  which 
such  innumerable  examples  are  now  to  be  found  in  the 


104  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


modern  books  on  Anthropology.  If  we  assume,  as  I  have 
done  more  than  once,  that  the  earliest  state  of  Man  was 
one  in  which  he  did  not  consciously  separate  himself  from 
the  world,  animate  and  inanimate,  which  surrounded 
him,  then  (as  I  have  also  said)  it  was  perfectly  natural 
for  him  to  take  some  animal  which  bulked  large  on  his 
horizon — some  food-animal  for  instance — and  to  pay 
respect  to  it  as  the  benefactor  of  his  tribe,  its  far-back 
ancestor  and  totem-symbol ;  or,  seeing  the  boundless 
blessing  of  the  cornfields,  to  believe  in  some  kind  of  spirit 
of  the  corn  (not  exactly  a  god  but  rather  a  magical  ghost) 
which,  reincarnated  every  year,  sprang  up  to  save  man¬ 
kind  from  famine.  But  then  no  sooner  had  he  done  this 
than  he  was  bound  to  perceive  that  in  cutting  down  the 
corn  or  in  eating  his  totem-bear  or  kangaroo  he  was  slaying 
his  own  best  self  and  benefactor.  In  that  instant  the 
consciousness  of  disunity,  the  sense  of  sin  in  some  undefined 
yet  no  less  disturbing  and  alarming  form  would  come  in. 
If,  before,  his  ritual  magic  had  been  concentrated  on  the 
simple  purpose  of  multiplying  the  animal  or  vegetable 
forms  of  his  food,  now  in  addition  his  magical  endeavour 
would  be  turned  to  averting  the  just  wrath  of  the  spirits 
who  animated  these  forms — just  indeed,  for  the  rudest 
savage  would  perceive  the  wrong  done  and  the  probability 
of  its  retribution.  Clearly  the  wrong  done  could  only  be 
expiated  by  an  equivalent  sacrifice  of  some  kind  on  the 
part  of  the  man,  or  the  tribe — that  is  by  the  offering  to 
the  totem-animal  or  to  the  corn-spirit  of  some  victim 
whom  these  nature  powers  in  their  turn  could  feed  upon 
and  assimilate.  In  this  way  the  nature-powers  would 
be  appeased,  the  sense  of  unity  would  be  restored,  and 
the  first  At-one-ment  effected. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  recite  in  any  detail  the  cruel 
and  hideous  sacrifices  which  have  been  perpetrated  in 
this  sense  all  over  the  world,  sometimes  in  appeasement 
of  a  wrong  committed  or  supposed  to  have  been  com- 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


105 


mitted  by  the  tribe  or  some  member  of  it,  sometimes  in 
placation  or  for  the  averting  of  death,  or  defeat,  or  plague, 
sometimes  merely  in  fulfilment  of  some  long-standing 
custom  of  forgotten  origin — the  flayings  and  floggings 
and  burnings  and  crucifixions  of  victims  without  end, 
carried  out  in  all  deliberation  and  solemnity  of  established 
ritual.  I  have  mentioned  some  cases  connected  with  the 
sowing  of  the  corn.  The  Bible  is  full  of  such  things,  from 
the  intended  sacrifice  of  Isaac  by  his  father  Abraham, 
to  the  actual  crucifixion  of  Jesus  by  the  Jews.  The  first¬ 
born  sons  were  claimed  by  a  god  who  called  himself 
"  jealous,”  and  were  only  to  be  redeemed  by  a  substitute.1 
Of  the  Canaanites  it  was  said  that  “  even  their  daughters 
they  have  burnt  in  the  fire  to  their  gods  ”  ; 2  and  of  the 
King  of  Moab,  that  when  he  saw  his  army  in  danger  of 
defeat,  “  he  took  his  eldest  son  that  should  have  reigned 
in  his  stead  and  offered  him  for  a  burnt-offering  on  the 
wall  !  ”  3  Dr.  Frazer  4  mentions  the  similar  case  of  the 
Carthaginians  (about  b.c.  300)  sacrificing  two  hundred 
children  of  good  family  as  a  propitiation  to  Baal  and  to 
save  their  beloved  city  from  the  assaults  of  the  Sicilian 
tyrant  Agathocles.  And  even  so  we  hear  that  on  that 
occasion  three  hundred  more  young  folk  volunteered  to 
die  for  the  fatherland. 

The  awful  sacrifices  made  by  the  Aztecs  in  Mexico  to 
their  gods  Huitzilopochtli,  Texcatlipoca,  and  others  are 
described  in  much  detail  by  Sahagun,  the  Spanish  mission¬ 
ary  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  victims  were  mostly 
prisoners  of  war  or  young  children  ;  they  were  numbered 
by  thousands.  In  one  case  Sahagun  describes  the  huge 
Idol  or  figure  of  the  god  as  largely  plated  with  gold  and 
holding  his  hands  palm  upward  and  in  a  downward  sloping 
position  over  a  cauldron  or  furnace  placed  below.  The 

1  Exodus  xxxiv.  20. 

a  Deut.  xii.  31.  3  2  Kings  iii.  27. 

4  The  Golden  Bough,  vol.  “  The  Dying  God,"  p.  167. 


106  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


children,  who  had  previously  been  borne  in  triumphal 
state  on  litters  over  the  crowd  and  decorated  with  every 
ornamental  device  of  feathers  and  flowers  and  wings,  were 
placed  one  by  one  on  the  vast  hands  and  rolled  down  into 
the  flames — as  if  the  god  were  himself  offering  them.1 2 
As  the  procession  approached  the  temple,  the  members 
of  it  wept  and  danced  and  sang,  and  here  again  the  abun¬ 
dance  of  tears  was  taken  for  a  good  augury  of  rain.3 

Bernal  Diaz  describes  how  he  saw  one  of  these  monstrous 
figures — that  of  Huitzilopochtli,  the  god  of  war,  all  inlaid 
with  gold  and  precious  stones ;  and  beside  it  were 
"  braziers,  wherein  burned  the  hearts  of  three  Indians, 
torn  from  their  bodies  that  very  day,  and  the  smoke  of 
them  and  the  savour  of  incense  were  the  sacrifice.” 

Sahagun  again  (in  Book  II,  ch.  5)  gives  a  long  account 
of  the  sacrifice  of  a  perfect  youth  at  Easter-time — which 
date  Sahagun  connects  with  the  Christian  festival  of  the 
Resurrection.  For  a  whole  year  the  youth  had  been  held 
in  honour  and  adored  by  the  people  as  the  very  image 
of  the  god  (Tetzcatlipoca)  to  whom  he  was  to  be  sacrificed. 
Every  luxury  and  the  fulfilment  of  his  last  wish  (including 
such  four  courtesans  as  he  desired)  had  been  granted  him. 
At  the  last  and  on  the  fatal  day,  leaving  his  companions 
and  his  worshipers  behind,  he  slowly  ascended  the  Temple 
staircase,  stripping  on  each  step  the  ornaments  from  his 
body,  and  breaking  and  casting  away  his  flutes  and  other 

1  It  is  curious  to  find  that  exactly  the  same  story  (of  the  sloping 
hands  and  the  children  rolled  down  into  the  flames)  is  related  con¬ 
cerning  the  above-mentioned  Baal  image  at  Carthage  (see  Diodorus 
Siculus,  xx.  14  ;  also  Baring  Gould’s  Religions  Belief ,  vol  i,  p.  375). 

2  “  A  los  ninos  que  mataban,  componianlos  en  muchos  atavios 
para  llevarlos  al  sacrificio,  y  llev&banlos  en  unas  literas  sobre  los 
hombros,  estas  literas  iban  adornadas  con  plumages  y  con  flores  : 
iban  tafiendo,  cantando  y  bailando  delante  de  ellos  .  .  .  Cuando 

llev&ban  los  nifios  a  matar,  si  llev&ban  y  echaban  muchos  lagrimas, 
alegrabansi  los  que  los  llev&ban  porque  tomaban  pronostico  de  que 
habian  de  tener  muchas  aguas  en  aquel  afio.”  Sahagun,  Historia 
Nueva  Espana,  Bk.  II,  ch.  i. 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


107 


musical  instruments ;  till,  reaching  the  summit,  he  was 
stretched,  curved  on  his  back,  and  belly  upwards,  over  the 
altar  stone,  while  the  priest  with  obsidian  knife  cut  his 
breast  open  and,  snatching  the  heart  out,  held  it  up,  yet 
beating,  as  an  offering  to  the  Sun.  In  the  meantime,  and 
while  the  heart  still  lived,  his  successor  for  the  next  year 
was  chosen. 

In  Book  II,  ch.  7  of  the  same  work  Sahagun  describes 
the  similar  offering  of  a  woman  to  a  goddess.  In  both 
cases  (he  explains)  of  young  man  or  young  woman,  the 
victims  were  richly  adorned  in  the  guise  of  the  god  or 
goddess  to  whom  they  were  offered,  and  at  the  same  time 
great  largesse  of  food  was  distributed  to  all  who  needed. 
[Here  we  see  the  connexion  in  the  general  mind  between 
the  gift  of  food  (by  the  gods)  and  the  sacrifice  of  precious 
blood  (by  the  people).]  More  than  once  Sahagun  mentions 
that  the  victims  in  these  Mexican  ceremonials  not  infre¬ 
quently  offered  themselves  as  a  voluntary  sacrifice  ;  and 
Prescott  says  1  that  the  offering  of  one’s  life  to  the  gods 
was  “  sometimes  voluntarily  embraced,  as  a  most  glorious 
death  opening  a  sure  passage  into  Paradise.” 

Dr.  Frazer  describes 3  the  far-back  Babylonian  festival 
of  the  Sacaea  in  which  “  a  prisoner,  condemned  to  death, 
was  dressed  in  the  king's  robes,  seated  on  the  king’s  throne, 
allowed  to  issue  whatever  commands  he  pleased,  to  eat, 
drink  and  enjoy  himself,  and  even  to  lie  with  the  king’s 
concubines.”  But  at  the  end  of  the  five  days  he  was 
stripped  of  his  royal  robes,  scourged,  and  hanged  or  im¬ 
paled.  It  is  certainly  astonishing  to  find  customs  so 
similar  prevailing  among  peoples  so  far  removed  in  space 
and  time  as  the  Aztecs  of  the  sixteenth  century  a.d.  and 
the  Babylonians  perhaps  of  the  sixteenth  century  b.c. 
But  we  know  that  this  subject  of  the  yearly  sacrifice  of 

1  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Bk.  I,  ch.  3. 

3  Golden  Bough,  “The  Dying  God,"  p.  114.  See  also  S.  Reinach, 
Cults,  Myths  and  Religion,  p.  94,  on  the  martyrdom  of  St.  Dasius. 


108  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

a  victim  attired  as  a  king  or  god  is  one  that  Dr.  Frazer 
has  especially  made  his  own,  and  for  further  information 
on  it  his  classic  work  should  be  consulted. 

Andrew  Lang  also,  with  regard  to  the  Aztecs,  quotes 
largely  from  Sahagun,  and  summarises  his  conclusions 
in  the  following  passage  :  “  The  general  theory  of  worship 
was  the  adoration  of  a  deity,  first  by  innumerable  human 
sacrifices,  next  by  the  special  sacrifice  of  a  man  for  the 
male  gods,  of  a  ‘woman  for  each  goddess.1  The  latter 
victims  were  regarded  as  the  living  images  or  incarnations 
of  the  divinities  in  each  case  ;  for  no  system  of  worship 
carried  farther  the  identification  of  the  god  with  the 
sacrifice  [?  victim],  and  of  both  with  the  officiating  priest. 
The  connexion  was  emphasized  by  the  priests  wearing 
the  newly-flayed  skins  of  the  victims— just  as  in  Greece, 
Egypt  and  Assyria,  the  fawn-skin  or  bull-hide  or  goat-skin 
or  fish-skin  of  the  victims  is  worn  by  the  celebrants. 
Finally,  an  image  of  the  god  was  made  out  of  paste,  and 
this  was  divided  into  morsels  and  eaten  in  a  hideous 
sacrament  by  those  who  communicated.”  2 

Revolting  as  this  whole  picture  is,  it  represents  as  we 
know  a  mere  thumbnail  sketch  of  the  awful  practices  of 
human  sacrifice  all  over  the  world.  We  hold  up  our  hands 
in  horror  at  the  thought  of  Huitzilopochtli  dropping  children 
from  his  fingers  into  the  flames,  but  we  have  to  remember 
that  our  own  most  Christian  Saint  Augustine  was  content 
to  describe  unbaptized  infants  as  crawling  for  ever  about 
the  floor  of  Hell !  What  sort  of  god,  we  may  ask,  did 

1  Compare  the  festival  of  Tharge.Ua  at  Athens,  originally  connected 
with  the  ripening  of  the  crops.  A  procession  was  formed  and  the 
firstfruits  of  the  year  offered  to  Apollo,  Artemis  and  the  Horae.  It 
was  an  expiatory  feast,  to  purify  the  State  from  all  guilt  and  avert 
the  wrath  of  the  god  [the  Sun].  A  man  and  a  woman,  as  representing 
the  male  and  female  population,  were  led  about  with  a  garland  of 
figs  [fertility]  round  their  necks,  to  the  sound  of  flutes  and  singing. 
They  were  then  scourged,  sacrificed,  and  their  bodies  burned  by  the 
seashore.  (Nettleship  and  Sandys.) 

2  A.  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  vol.  ii,  p.  97. 


HITES  OF  EXPIATION  109 

Augustine  worship  ?  The  Being  who  could  condemn 
children  to  such  a  fate  was  certainly  no  better  than  the 
Mexican  Idol. 

And  yet  Augustine  was  a  great  and  noble  man,  with 
some  by  no  means  unworthy  conceptions  of  the  greatness 
of  his  God.  In  the  same  way  the  Aztecs  were  in  many 
respects  a  refined  and  artistic  people,  and  their  religion 
was  not  all  superstition  and  bloodshed.  Prescott  says  of 
them  1  that  they  believed  in  a  supreme  Creator  and  Lord 
“  omnipresent,  knowing  all  thoughts,  giving  all  gifts, 
without  whom  Man  is  as  nothing — invisible,  incorporeal, 
one  God,  of  perfect  perfection  and  purity,  under  whose 
wings  we  find  repose  and  a  sure  defence.”  How  can  we 
reconcile  St.  Augustine  with  his  own  devilish  creed,  or 
the  religious  belief  of  the  Aztecs  with  their  unspeakable 
cruelties  ?  Perhaps  we  can  only  reconcile  them  by 
remembering  out  of  what  deeps  of  barbarism  and  what 
nightmares  of  haunting  Fear,  man  has  slowly  emerged — 
and  is  even  now  only  slowly  emerging  ;  by  remembering 
also  that  the  ancient  ceremonies  and  rituals  of  Magic  and 
Fear  remained  on  and  vyere  cultivated  by  the  multitude 
in  each  nation  long  after  the  bolder  and  nobler  spirits  had 
attained  to  breathe  a  purer  air ;  by  remembering  that 
even  to  the  present  day  in  each  individual  the  Old  and  the 
New  are  for  a  long  period  thus  intricately  intertangled. 
It  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  practice  of  human  and  animal 
sacrifice  (with  whatever  revolting  details)  should  have  been 
cultivated  by  nine-tenths  of  the  human  race  over  the  globe 
out  of  sheer  perversity  and  without  some  reason  which 
at  any  rate  to  the  perpetrators  themselves  appeared  com¬ 
manding  and  convincing.  To-day  [1918]  we  are  witnessing 
in  the  Great  European  War  a  carnival  of  human  slaughter 
which  in  magnitude  and  barbarity  eclipses  in  one  stroke 
all  the  accumulated  ceremonial  sacrifices  of  historical 
ages  ;  and  when  we  ask  the  why  and  wherefore  of  this 
1  Conquest  o*  Mexico,  Bk.  I,  ch,  5. 


110  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


horrid  spectacle  we  are  told,  apparently  in  all  sincerity, 
and  by  both  the  parties  engaged,  of  the  noble  objects  and 
commanding  moralities  which  inspire  and  compel  it.  We 
can  hardly,  in  this  last  case,  disbelieve  altogether  in  the 
genuineness  of  the  plea,  so  why  should  we  do  so  in  the 
former  case  ?  In  both  cases  we  perceive  that  underneath 
the  surface  pretexts  and  moralities  Fear  is  and  was  the  great 
urging  and  commanding  force. 

The  truth  is  that  Sin  and  Sacrifice  represent — if  you 
once  allow  for  the  overwhelming  sway  of  fear — perfectly 
reasonable  views  of  human  conduct,  adopted  instinctively 
by  mankind  since  the  earliest  times.  If  in  a  moment  of 
danger  or  an  access  of  selfish  greed  you  deserted  your 
brother  tribesman  or  took  a  mean  advantage  of  him,  you 
‘  sinned  *  against  him  ;  and  naturally  you  expiated  the 
sin  by  an  equivalent  sacrifice  of  some  kind  made  to  the 
one  you  had  wronged.  Such  an  idea  and  such  a  practice 
were  the  very  foundation  of  social  life  and  human  morality, 
and  must  have  sprung  up  as  soon  as  ever,  in  the  course 
of  evolution,  man  became  capable  of  differentiating  himself 
from  his  fellows  and  regarding  his  own  conduct  as  that 
of  a  *  separate  self.’  It  was  in  the  very  conception  of  a 
separate  self  that  ‘  sin  ’  and  disunity  first  began  ;  and  it 
was  by  *  sacrifice  *  that  unity  and  harmony  were  restored, 
appeasement  and  atonement  effected. 

But  in  those  earliest  times,  as  I  have  already  indicated 
more  than  once,  man  felt  himself  intimately  related  not 
only  to  his  brother  tribesman,  but  to  the  animals  and  to 
general  Nature.  It  was  not  so  much  that  he  thought  thus 
as  that  he  never  thought  otherwise  !  He  felt  subconsciously 
that  he  was  a  part  of  all  this  outer  world.  And  so  he  adopted 
for  his  totems  or  presiding  spirits  every  possible  animal, 
as  we  have  seen,  and  all  sorts  of  nature-phenomena,  such 
as  rain  and  fire  and  water  and  clouds,  and  sun,  moon  and 
stars — which  we  consider  quite  senseless  and  inanimate. 
Towards  these  apparently  senseless  things  therefore  he 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


111 


felt  the  same  compunction  as  I  have  described  him  feeling 
towards  his  brother  tribesmen.  He  could  sin  against 
them  too.  He  could  sin  against  his  totem-animal  by 
eating  it ;  he  could  sin  against  his  ‘  brother  the  ox  ’  by 
consuming  its  strength  in  the  labour  of  the  plough  ;  he 
could  sin  against  the  corn  by  cutting  it  down  and  grinding 
it  into  flour,  or  against  the  precious  and  beautiful  pine- 
tree  by  laying  his  axe  to  its  roots  and  converting  it  into 
mere  timber  for  his  house.  Further  still,  no  doubt  he 
could  sin  against  elemental  nature.  This  might  be  more 
difficult  to  be  certain  of,  but  when  the  signs  of  elemental 
displeasure  were  not  to  be  mistaken — when  the  rain  with¬ 
held  itself  for  months,  or  the  storms  and  lightning  dealt 
death  and  destruction,  when  the  crops  failed  or  evil  plagues 
afflicted  mankind — then  there  could  be  little  uncertainty 
that  he  had  sinned  ;  and  Fear,  which  had  haunted  him 
like  a  demon  from  the  first  day  when  he  became  conscious 
of  his  separation  from  his  fellows  and  from  Nature,  stood 
over  him  and  urged  to  dreadful  propitiations. 

In  all  these  cases  some  sacrifice  in  reparation  was  the 
obvious  thing.  We  have  seen  that  to  atone  for  the 
cutting-down  of  the  corn  a  human  victim  would  often 
be  slaughtered.  The  corn-spirit  clearly  approved  of  this, 
for  wherever  the  blood  and  the  remains  of  the  victim  were 
strewn  the  corn  always  sprang  up  more  plentifully.  The 
tribe  or  human  group  made  reparation  thus  to  the  corn  ; 
the  corn-spirit  signified  approval.  The  ‘  sin  ’  was  expiated 
and  harmony  restored.  Sometimes  the  sacrifice  was  volun¬ 
tarily  offered  by  a  tribesman  ;  sometimes  it  was  enforced, 
by  lot  or  otherwise  ;  sometimes  the  victim  was  a  slave, 
or  a  captive  enemy ;  sometimes  even  an  animal.  All 
that  did  not  so  much  matter.  The  main  thing  was  that 
the  formal  expiation  had  been  carried  out,  and  the  wrath 
of  the  spirits  averted. 

It  is  known  that  tribes  whose  chief  food-animal  was 
the  bear  felt  it  necessary  to  kill  and  eat  a  bear  occasionally  ; 


112  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


but  they  could  not  do  this  without  a  sense  of  guilt,  and 
some  fear  of  vengeance  from  the  great  Bear-spirit.  So 
they  ate  the  slain  bear  at  a  communal  feast  in  which  the 
tribesmen  shared  the  guilt  and  celebrated  their  community 
with  their  totem  and  with  each  other.  And  since  they  could 
not  make  any  reparation  directly  to  the  slain  animal  itself 
after  its  death,  they  made  their  reparation  before,  bringing 
all  sorts  of  presents  and  food  to  it  for  a  long  anterior  period, 
and  paying  every  kind  of  worship  and  respect  to  it.  The 
same  with  the  bull  and  the  ox.  At  the  festival  of  the 
Bouphonia,  in  some  of  the  cities  of  Greece  as  I  have  already 
mentioned,  the  actual  bull  sacrificed  was  the  handsomest 
and  most  carefully  nurtured  that  could  be  obtained  ;  it 
was  crowned  with  flowers  and  led  in  procession  with  every 
mark  of  reverence  and  worship.  And  when — as  I  have 
already  pointed  out — at  the  great  Spring  festival,  instead 
of  a  bull  or  a  goat  or  a  ram,  a  human  victim  was  immolated, 
it  was  a  custom  (which  can  be  traced  very  widely  over 
the  world)  to  feed  and  indulge  and  honour  the  victim  to 
the  last  degree  for  a  whole  year  before  the  final  ceremony, 
arraying  him  often  as  a  king  and  placing  a  crown 
upon  his  head,  by  wray  of  acknowledgment  of  the 
noble  and  necessary  work  he  was  doing  for  the  general 
good. 

What  a  touching  and  beautiful  ceremony  was  that — 
belonging  especially  to  the  North  of  Syria,  and  lands  where 
the  pine  is  so  beneficent  and  beloved  a  tree — the  mourning 
ceremony  of  the  death  and  burial  of  Attis  !  when  a  pine- 
tree,  felled  by  the  axe,  was  hollowed  out,  and  in  the  hollow 
an  image  (often  itself  carved  out  of  pinewood)  of  the  young 
Attis  was  placed.  Could  any  symbolism  express  more 
tenderly  the  idea  that  the  gracious  youth — who  repre¬ 
sented  Spring,  too  soon  slain  by  the  rude  tusk  of  Winter — 
was  himself  the  very  human  soul  of  the  pine-tree  P1  At 

1  See  Julius  Firmicus,  who  says  ( De  Err  ore,  c.  28) :  “In  sacris 
Phrygiis,  quae  Matris  deum  dicunt,  per  annos  singulos  arbor  pinea 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


113 


some  earlier  period,  no  doubt,  a  real  youth  had  been  sacri¬ 
ficed  and  his  body  bound  within  the  pine  ;  but  now  it  was 
deemed  sufficient  for  the  maidens  to  sing  their  wild  songs 
of  lamentation  ;  and  for  the  priests  and  male  enthusiasts 
to  cut  and  gash  themselves  with  knives,  or  to  sacrifice 
(as  they  did)  to  the  Earth-mother  the  precious  blood 
offering  of  their  virile  organs — symbols  of  fertility  in 
return  for  the  promised  and  expected  renewal  of  Nature 
and  the  crops  in  the  coming  Spring.  For  the  ceremony, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  did  not  end  with  death  and 
lamentation,  but  led  on,  perfectly  naturally,  after  a  day  or 
two  to  a  festival  of  resurrection,  when  it  was  discovered 
— just  as  in  the  case  of  Osiris — that  the  pine-tree  coffin 
was  empty,  and  the  immortal  life  had  flown.  How  strange 
the  similarity  and  parallelism  of  all  these  things  to  the 
story  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels — the  sacrifice  of  a  life  made 
in  order  to  bring  salvation  to  men  and  expiation  of  sins, 
the  crowning  of  the  victim,  and  arraying  in  royal  attire, 
the  scourging  and  the  mockery,  the  binding  or  nailing  to 
a  tree,  the  tears  of  Mary,  and  the  resurrection  and  the 
empty  coffin  ! — or  how  not  at  all  strange  when  we  consider 
in  what  numerous  forms  and  among  how  many  peoples, 
this  same  parable  and  ritual  had  as  a  matter  of  fact  been 
celebrated,  and  how  it  had  ultimately  come  down  to 
bring  its  message  of  redemption  into  a  somewhat  obscure 
Syrian  city,  in  the  special  shape  with  which  we  are 
familiar. 

Though  the  parable  or  legend  in  its  special  Christian 
form  bears  with  it  the  consciousness  of  the  presence  of 
beings  whom  we  may  call  gods,  it  is  important  to  remember 

caeditur,  et  in  media  arbore  simulacrum  juvenis  subligatur.  In 
Isiacis  sacris  de  pinea  arbore  caeditur  truncus  ;  hujus  trunei  media 
pars  subtiliter  excavatur,  illis  de  segminibus  factum  idolum  Osiridis 
sepelitur.  In  Proserpinae  sacris  cassa  arbor  in  effigiem  virginis 
formamque  componitur,  et  cum  intra  civitatem  i'uerit  illata, 
quadraginta  noctibus  plangitur,  quadragesima  vero  nocte 
comburitur.’' 


8 


114  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


that  in  many  or  most  of  its  earlier  forms,  though  it  dealt 
in  *  spirits  ' — the  spirit  of  the  corn,  or  the  spirit  of  the 
Spring,  or  the  spirits  of  the  rain  and  the  thunder,  or  the 
spirits  of  totem-animals — it  had  not  yet  quite  risen  to 
the  idea  of  gods.  It  had  not  risen  to  the  conception  of 
eternal  deities  sitting  apart  and  governing  the  world  in 
solemn  conclave — as  from  the  slopes  of  Olympus  or  the 
recesses  of  the  Christian  Heaven.  It  belonged,  in  fact, 
in  its  inception,  to  the  age  of  Magic.  The  creed  of  Sin 
and  Sacrifice,  or  of  Guilt  and  Expiation — whatever  we 
like  to  call  it — was  evolved  perfectly  naturally  out  of 
the  human  mind  (when  brought  face  to  face  with  Life 
and  Nature)  at  some  early  stage  of  its  self-consciousness. 
It  was  essentially  the  result  of  man’s  deep,  original  and 
instinctive  sense  of  solidarity  with  Nature,  now  denied 
and  belied  and  to  some  degree  broken  up  by  the  growth 
and  conscious  insistence  of  the  self-regarding  impulses. 
It  was  the  consciousness  of  disharmony  and  disunity, 
causing  men  to  feel  all  the  more  poignantly  the  desire 
and  the  need  of  reconciliation.  It  was  a  realisation  of 
union  made  clear  by  its  very  loss.  It  assumed  of  course, 
in  a  subconscious  way  as  I  have  already  indicated,  that 
the  external  world  was  the  habitat  of  a  mind  or  minds 
similar  to  man’s  own  ;  but  that  being  granted,  it  is  evident 
that  the  particular  theories  current  in  this  or  that  place 
about  the  nature  of  the  world — the  theories,  as  we  should 
say,  of  science  or  theology — did  not  alter  the  general  out¬ 
lines  of  the  creed  ;  they  only  coloured  its  details  and  gave 
its  ritual  different  dramatic  settings.  The  mental  attitudes, 
for  instance,  of  Abraham  sacrificing  the  ram,  or  of  the 
Siberian  angakout  slaughtering  a  totem-bear,  or  of  a  modern 
and  pious  Christian  contemplating  the  Saviour  on  the  Cross 
are  really  almost  exactly  the  same.  I  mention  this  because 
in  tracing  the  origins  or  the  evolution  of  religions  it  is 
important  to  distinguish  clearly  what  is  essential  and 
universal  from  that  which  is  merely  local  and  temporary. 


RITES  OF  EXPIATION 


115 


Some  people,  no  doubt,  would  be  shocked  at  the  com¬ 
parisons  just  made  ;  but  surely  it  is  much  more  inspiriting 
and  encouraging  to  think  that  whatever  progress  has  been 
made  in  the  religious  outlook  of  the  world  has  come  about 
through  the  gradual  mental  growth  and  consent  of  the 
peoples,  rather  than  through  some  unique  and  miraculous 
event  of  a  rather  arbitrary  and  unexplained  character— 
which  indeed  might  never  be  repeated,  and  concerning 
which  it  would  perhaps  be  impious  to  suggest  that  it  should 
be  repeated. 

The  consciousness  then  of  Sin  (or  of  alienation  from 
the  life  of  the  whole),  and  of  restoration  or  redemption 
through  Sacrifice,  seems  to  have  disclosed  itself  in  the  human 
race  in  very  very  far-back  times,  and  to  have  symbolised 
itself  in  some  most  ancient  rituals  ;  and  if  we  are  shocked 
sometimes  at  the  barbarities  which  accompanied  those 
rituals,  yet  we  must  allow'  that  these  barbarities  show 
how  intensely  the  early  people  felt  the  solemnity  and 
importance  of  the  whole  matter ;  and  we  must  allow  too 
that  the  barbarities  did  sear  and  burn  themselves  into 
rude  and  ienorant  minds  with  the  sense  of  the  need  of 
Sacrifice,  and  with  a  result  perhaps  which  could  not  have 
been  compassed  in  any  other  way. 

For  after  all  we  see  now  that  sacrifice  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  social  life.  “It  is  expedient  that  one  man 
should  die  for  the  people  ”  ;  and  not  only  that  one  man 
should  actually  die,  but  (what  is  far  more  important) 
that  each  man  should  be  ready  and  willing  to  die  in  that 
cause,  when  the  occasion  and  the  need  arises.  Taken 
in  its  larger  meanings  and  implications  Sacrifice,  as  con¬ 
ceived  in  the  ancient  world,  was  a  perfectly  reasonable 
thing.  It  should  pervade  modem  life  more  than  it  does. 
All  we  have  or  enjoy  flows  from,  or  is  implicated  with, 
pain  and  suffering  in  others,  and — if  there  is  any  justice 
in  Nature  or  Humanity — it  demands  an  equivalent  readiness 
to  suffer  on  our  part.  If  Christianity  has  any  real 


116  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


essence,  that  essence  is  perhaps  expressed  in  some  such 
ritual  or  practice  of  Sacrifice,  and  we  see  that  the  dim 
beginnings  of  this  idea  date  from  the  far-back  customs 
of  savages  coming  down  from  a  time  anterior  to  all  recorded 
history. 


VIII 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS  AND  THE  SECOND  BIRTH 

We  have  suggested  in  the  last  chapter  how  the  conceptions 
of  Sin  and  Sacrifice  coming  down  to  us  from  an  extremely 
remote  past,  and  embodied  among  the  various  peoples 
of  the  world  sometimes  in  crude  and  bloodthirsty  rites, 
sometimes  in  symbols  and  rituals  of  a  gentler  and  more 
gracious  character,  descended  at  last  into  Christianity 
and  became  a  part  of  its  creed  and  of  the  creed  of  the 
modem  world.  On  the  whole  perhaps  we  may  trace  a 
slow  amelioration  in  this  process  and  may  flatter  ourselves 
that  the  Christian  centuries  exhibit  a  more  philosophical 
understanding  of  what  Sin  is,  and  a  more  humane  con¬ 
ception  of  what  Sacrifice  should  be,  than  the  centuries 
preceding.  But  I  fear  that  any  very  decided  statement 
or  sweeping  generalisation  to  that  effect  would  be-— to 
say  the  least — rash.  Perhaps  there  is  a  very  slow  amelio¬ 
ration  ;  but  the  briefest  glance  at  the  history  of  the 
Christian  churches — the  horrible  rancours  and  revenges 
of  the  clergy  and  the  sects  against  each  other  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries  a.d.,  the  heresy-hunting  crusades  at 
Beziers  and  other  places  and  the  massacres  of  the  Albigenses 
in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  the  witch-findings 
and  burnings  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth,  the  hideous 
science-urged  and  bishop-blessed  warfare  of  the  twentieth 
— horrors  fully  as  great  as  any  we  can  charge  to  the  account 

117 


118  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


of  the  Aztecs  or  the  Babylonians — must  give  us  pause. 
Nor  must  we  forget  that  if  there  is  by  chance  a  substantial 
amelioration  in  our  modern  outlook  with  regard  to  these 
matters  the  same  had  begun  already  before  the  advent 
of  Christianity  and  can  by  no  means  be  ascribed  to  any 
miraculous  influence  of  that  religion.  Abraham  was 
prompted  to  slay  a  ram  as  a  substitute  for  his  son,  long 
before  the  Christians  were  thought  of;  the  rather  savage 
Artemis  of  the  old  Greek  rites  was  (according  to  Pausanias)  1 
honoured  by  the  yearly  sacrifice  of  a  perfect  boy  and  girl, 
but  later  it  was  deemed  sufficient  to  draw  a  knife  across 
their  throats  as  a  symbol,  with  the  result  of  spilling  only 
a  few  drops  of  their  blood,  or  to  flog  the  boys  (with  the 
same  result)  upon  her  altar.  Among  the  Khonds  in  old 
days  many  victims  (meriahs)  were  sacrificed  to  the  gods, 
“  but  in  time  the  man  was  replaced  by  a  horse,  the  horse 
by  a  bull,  the  bull  by  a  ram,  the  ram  by  a  kid,  the  kid 
by  fowls,  and  the  fowls  by  many  flowers.”  2  At  one  time, 
according  to  the  Yajur-Veda,  there  was  a  festival  at  which 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  victims,  men  and  women, 
boys  and  girls,  were  sacrificed  ;  “  but  reform  supervened, 
and  now  the  victims  were  bound  as  before  to  the  stake, 
but  afterwards  amid  litanies  to  the  immolated  (god) 
Narayana,  the  sacrificing  priest  brandished  a  knife  and 
— severed  the  bonds  of  the  captives  !  ”  3  At  the  Athenian 
festival  of  the  Thargelia,  to  which  I  referred  in  the  last 
chapter,  it  appears  that  the  victims,  in  later  times,  instead 
of  being  slain,  were  tossed  from  a  height  into  the  sea,  and 
after  being  rescued  were  then  simply  banished ;  while 
at  Leucatas  at  a  similar  festival  the  fall  of  the  victim  was 
graciously  broken  by  tying  feathers  and  even  living  birds 
to  his  body.4 

With  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  general  progress  of  man- 

1  vii.  19,  and  iii.  8,  16. 

J  Primitive  Folk,  by  Elie  Reclus  (Contemp.  Science  Series),  p.  330. 

3  Ibid. 

4  Muller’s  Dorians,  Book  II,  ch.  ii,  par  10. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


119 


kind  we  may,  I  think,  perceive  some  such  slow  ameliorations 
in  the  matter  of  the  brutality  and  superstition  of  the  old 
religions.  How  far  any  later  ameliorations  were  due  to 
the  direct  influence  of  Christianity  might  be  a  difficult 
question  ;  but  what  I  think  we  can  clearly  see — and  what 
especially  interests  us  here — is  that  in  respect  to  its  main 
religious  ideas,  and  the  matter  underlying  them  (exclusive 
of  the  manner  of  their  treatment,  which  necessarily  has 
varied  among  different  peoples)  Christianity  is  of  one  piece 
with  the  earlier  pagan  creeds  and  is  for  the  most  part  a 
re-statement  and  renewed  expression  of  world-old  doctrines 
whose  first  genesis  is  lost  in  the  haze  of  the  past,  beyond 
all  recorded  history. 

I  have  illustrated  this  view  with  regard  to  the  doctrine 
of  Sin  and  Sacrifice.  Let  us  take  two  or  three  other 
illustrations.  Let  us  take  the  doctrine  of  Re-birth  or 
Regeneration.  The  first  few  verses  of  St.  John's  Gospel 
are  occupied  with  the  subject  of  salvation  through  rebirth 
or  regeneration.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  again,  he  cannot 
see  the  kingdom  of  God."  ..."  Except  a  man  be  born 
of  water  and  the  Spirit,  he  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God."  Our  Baptismal  Service  begins  by  saying  that 
"  forasmuch  as  all  men  are  conceived  and  born  in  sin  ; 
and  that  our  Saviour  Christ  saith,  None  can  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  God  except  he  be  regenerate  and  born 
anew  of  water  and  the  Holy  Ghost  ” ;  therefore  it  is 
desirable  that  this  child  should  be  baptised,  "  received 
into  Christ's  Holy  Church,  and  be  made  a  lively  member 
of  the  same."  That  is  to  say,  there  is  one  birth,  after 
the  flesh,  but  a  second  birth  is  necessary,  a  birth  after 
the  Spirit  and  into  the  Church  of  Christ.  Our  Confirm¬ 
ation  Service  is  simply  a  service  repeating  and  confirming 
these  views,  at  an  age  (fourteen  to  sixteen  or  so)  when 
the  boy  or  girl  is  capable  of  understanding  what  is  being 
done. 

But  our  Baptismal  and  Confirmation  ceremonies  com- 


120  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


bined  are  clearly  the  exact  correspondence  and  parallel 
of  the  old  pagan  ceremonies  of  Initiation,  which  are  or 
have  been  observed  in  almost  every  primitive  tribe  over 
the  world.  “  The  rite  of  the  second  birth,”  says  Jane 
Harrison,1  ”  is  widespread,  universal,  over  half  the  savage 
world.  With  the  savage  to  be  twice-born  is  the  rule.  By 
his  first  birth  he  comes  into  the  world  ;  by  his  second  he 
is  born  into  his  tribe.  At  his  first  birth  he  belongs  to  his 
mother  and  the  women-folk  ;  at  his  second  he  becomes 
a  full-fledged  man  and  passes  into  the  society  of  the 
warriors  of  his  tribe.”  ...”  These  rites  are  very  various, 
but  they  all  point  one  moral,  that  the  former  things  are 
passed  away  and  that  the  new'-born  man  has  entered  upon 
a  new  life.  Simplest  of  all,  and  most  instructive,  is  the 
rite  practised  by  the  Kikuyu  tribe  of  British  East  Africa, 
who  require  that  every  boy,  just  before  circumcision, 
must  be  born  again.  The  mother  stands  up  with  the  boy 
crouching  at  her  feet  ;  she  pretends  to  go  through  all  the 
labour  pains,  and  the  boy  on  being  reborn  cries  like  a  babe 
and  is  washed.”  2 

Let  us  pause  for  a  moment.  An  Initiate  is  of  course 
one  who  ”  enters  in.”  He  enters  into  the  Tribe  ;  he  enters 
into  the  revelation  of  certain  Mysteries  ;  he  becomes  an 
associate  of  a  certain  Totem,  a  certain  God  ;  a  member 
of  a  new  Society,  or  Church — a  church  of  Mithra,  or 
Dionysus  or  Christ.  To  do  any  of  these  things  he  must 
be  born  again  ;  he  must  die  to  the  old  life  ;  he  must  pass 
through  ceremonials  which  symbolise  the  change.  One 
of  these  ceremonials  is  washing.  As  the  new-born  babe 
is  washed,  so  must  the  new-born  initiate  be  washed ;  and 
as  by  primitive  man  (and  not  without  reason)  blood  was 
considered  the  most  vital  and  regenerative  of  fluids,  the 
very  elixir  of  life,  so  in  earliest  times  it  was  common  to 
wash  the  initiate  in  blood.  If  the  initiate  had  to  be  born 

1  Ancient  Art  and  Ritual,  p.  104. 

3  See  also  Themis,  p.  21. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


121 


anew,  it  would  seem  reasonable  to  suppose  that  he  must 
first  die.  So,  not  unfrequently,  he  was  wounded,  or 
scourged,  and  baptised  with  his  own  blood,  or,  in  cases, 
one  of  the  candidates  was  really  killed  and  his  blood  used 
as  a  substitute  for  the  blood  of  the  others.  No  doubt 
human  sacrifice  attended  the  earliest  initiations.  But  later 
it  was  sufficient  to  be  half-drowned  in  the  blood  of  a  Bull 
as  in  the  Mithra  cult,1  or  ‘  washed  in  the  blood  of  the 
Lamb  *  as  in  the  Christian  phraseology.  Finally,  with  a 
growing  sense  of  decency  and  aesthetic  perception  among 
the  various  peoples,  washing  with  pure  water  came  in  the 
initiation-ceremonies  to  take  the  place  of  blood  ;  and  our 
baptismal  service  has  reduced  the  ceremony  to  a  mere 
sprinkling  with  water.2 

To  continue  the  quotation  from  Miss  Harrison  :  “  More 
often  the  new  birth  is  simulated,  or  imagined,  as  a  death 
and  a  resurrection,  either  of  the  boys  themselves  or  of 
some  one  else  in  their  presence.  Thus  at  initiation  among 
some  tribes  of  South-east  Australia,  when  the  boys  are 
assembled  an  old  man  dressed  in  stringy  bark-fibre  lies 
down  in  a  grave.  He  is  covered  up  lightly  with  sticks 
and  earth,  and  the  grave  is  smoothed  over.  The  buried 
man  holds  in  his  hand  a  small  bush  which  seems  to  be 
growing  from  the  ground,  and  other  bushes  are  stuck  in 
the  ground  round  about.  The  novices  are  then  brought 
to  the  edge  of  the  grave  and  a  song  is  sung.  Gradually, 
as  the  song  goes  on,  the  bush  held  by  the  buried  man  begins 
to  quiver.  It  moves  more  and  more,  and  bit  by  bit  the 
man  himself  starts  up  from  the  grave.” 

Strange  !  in  our  own  Baptismal  Service  and  just  before 
the  actual  christening  we  read  these  words,  “  Then  shall 
the  Priest  say  :  O  merciful  God,  grant  that  the  old  Adam 
in  this  child  may  be  so  buried  that  the  new  man  may  be 

1  See  supra,  ch.  iii.  p.  43. 

3  For  the  virtue  supposed  to  reside  in  blood  see  Westermarck’s 
Moral  Ideas,  ch.  46. 


122  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


raised  up  in  him :  grant  that  all  carnal  affections  may 
die  in  him,  and  that  all  things  belonging  to  the  Spirit  may 
live  and  grow  in  him  !  "  Can  we  doubt  that  the  Australian 
medicine-man,  standing  at  the  graveside  of  the  re-arisen 
old  black-fellow,  pointed  the  same  moral  to  the  young 
initiates  as  the  priest  does  to-day  to  those  assembled  before 
him  in  church — for  indeed  we  know  that  among  savage 
tribes  initiations  have  always  been  before  all  things  the 
occasions  of  moral  and  social  teaching  ?  Can  we  doubt 
that  he  said,  in  substance  if  not  in  actual  words  :  “As 
this  man  has  arisen  from  the  grave,  so  you  must  also  arise 
from  your  old  childish  life  of  amusement  and  self-gratifi¬ 
cation  and  enter  into  the  life  of  the  tribe,  the  life  of  the 
Spirit  of  the  tribe."  “  In  totemistic  societies,"  to  quote 
Miss  Harrison  again,  “  and  in  the  animal  secret  societies 
that  seem  to  grow  out  of  them,  the  novice  is  born  again 
as  the  sacred  animal.  Thus  among  the  Carrier  Indians  1 
when  a  man  wants  to  become  a  Lulem  or  '  Bear,'  however 
cold  the  season  he  tears  off  his  clothes,  puts  on  a  bear-skin 
and  dashes  into  the  woods,  where  he  will  stay  for  three 
or  four  days.  Every  night  his  fellow-villagers  will  go 
out  in  search  parties  to  find  him.  They  cry  out  Yi ! 
Kelulem  (come  on,  Bear),  and  he  answers  with  angry  growls. 
Usually  they  fail  to  find  him,  but  he  comes  back  at  last 
himself.  He  is  met,  and  conducted  to  the  ceremonial 
lodge,  and  there  in  company  with  the  rest  of  the  Bears 
dances  solemnly  his  first  appearance.  Disappearance  and 
reappearance  is  as  common  a  rite  in  initiation  as  simulated 
killing  and  resurrection,  and  has  the  same  object.  Both 
are  rites  of  transition,  of  passing  from  one  state  to  another." 
In  the  Christian  ceremonies  the  boy  or  girl  puts  away 
childish  things  and  puts  on  the  new  man,  but  instead  of 
putting  on  a  bear-skin  he  puts  on  Christ.  There  is  not  so 
much  difference  as  may  appear  on  the  surface.  To  be 
identified  with  your  Totem  is  to  be  identified  with  the 

1  Golden  Bough*,  III,  p.  438. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


123 


sacred  being  who  watches  over  your  tribe,  who  has  given 
his  life  for  your  tribe  ;  it  is  to  be  born  again,  to  be  washed 
not  only  with  water  but  with  the  Holy  Spirit  of  all  your 
fellows.  To  be  baptized  into  Christ  ought  to  mean  to 
be  regenerated  in  the  Holy  Spirit  of  all  humanity  ;  and 
no  doubt  in  cases  it  does  mean  this,  but  too  often  unfor¬ 
tunately  it  has  only  amounted  to  a  pretence  of  religious 
sanction  given  to  the  meanest  and  bitterest  quarrels  of 
the  Churches  and  the  States. 

This  idea  of  a  New  Birth  at  initiation  explains  the 
prevalent  pagan  custom  of  subjecting  the  initiates  to 
serious  ordeals,  often  painful  and  even  dangerous.  If  one 
is  to  be  born  again,  obviously  one  must  be  ready  to 
face  death  ;  the  one  thing  cannot  be  without  the  other. 
One  must  be  able  to  endure  pain,  like  the  Red  Indian 
braves  ;  to  go  long  periods  fasting  and  without  food  or 
drink,  like  the  choupan  among  the  Western  Inoits — who 
wanders  for  whole  nights  over  the  ice-fields  under  the 
moon,  scantily  clothed  and  braving  the  intense  cold  ;  to 
overcome  the  very  fear  of  death  and  danger,  like  the 
Australian  novices  who,  at  first  terrified  by  the  sound  of 
the  bull-roarer  and  threats  of  fire  and  the  knife,  learn 
finally  to  cast  their  fears  away.1  By  so  doing  one  puts 
off  the  old  childish  things,  and  qualifies  oneself  by  firmness 
and  courage  to  become  a  worthy  member  of  the  society 

1  According  to  accounts  of  the  Wiradthuri  tribe  of  Western 
Australia,  in  their  initiations,  the  lads  were  frightened  by  a  large 
fire  being  lighted  near  them,  and  hearing  the  awful  sound  of  the  bull 
roarers,  while  they  were  told  that  Dhuramoolan  was  about  to  burn 
them  ;  the  legend  being  that  Dhuramoolan,  a  powerful  being,  whose 
voice  sounded  like  thunder,  would  take  the  boys  away  into  the  bush 
and  instruct  them  in  all  the  laws,  traditions  and  customs  of  the  com¬ 
munity.  So  he  pretended  that  he  always  killed  the  boys,  cut  them 
up,  and  burnt  them  to  ashes,  after  which  he  moulded  the  ashes  into 
human  shape,  and  restored  them  to  life  as  new  beings.  (See  R.  H 
Matthews,  “  The  Wiradthuri  tribes,”  Journal  Anthrop.  Inst.,  vol.  xxv, 
1S96,  pp.  297  sq.) 


124  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


into  which  one  is  called.1  The  rules  of  social  life  are 
taught — the  duty  to  one’s  tribe,  and  to  oneself,  truth¬ 
speaking,  defence  of  women  and  children,  the  care  of  cattle, 
the  meaning  of  sex  and  marriage,  and  even  the  mysteries 
of  such  religious  ideas  and  rudimentary  science  as  the  tribe 
possesses.  And  by  so  doing  one  really  enters  into  a  new 
life.  Things  of  the  spiritual  world  begin  to  dawn.  Julius 
Firmicus,  in  describing  the  mysteries  of  the  resurrection 
of  Osiris,2 3 4  says  that  when  the  worshipers  had  satiated 
themselves  with  lamentations  over  the  death  of  the  god 
then  the  priest  would  go  round  anointing  them  with  oil 
and  whispering,  “  Be  of  good  cheer,  O  Neophytes  of  the 
new-arisen  God,  for  to  us  too  from  our  pains  shall  come 
salvation.”  3 

It  would  seem  that  at  some  very  early  time  in  the  history 
of  tribal  and  priestly  initiations  an  attempt  was  made  to 
impress  upon  the  neophytes  the  existence  and  over¬ 
shadowing  presence  of  spiritual  and  ghostly  beings.  Perhaps 
the  pains  endured  in  the  various  01  deals,  the  long  fastings, 
the  silences  in  the  depth  of  the  forests  or  on  the  mountains 
or  among  the  ice-floes,  helped  to  rouse  the  visionary  faculty. 
The  developments  of  this  faculty  among  the  black  and 
coloured  peoples — East-Indian,  Burmese,  African,  American- 
Indian,  etc.- — are  well  known.  Miss  Alice  Fletcher,  who 
lived  among  the  Omaha  Indians  for  thirty  years,  gives 
a  most  interesting  account  4  of  the  general  philosophy  of 
that  people  and  their  rites  of  initiation.  “  The  Omahas 
regard  all  animate  and  inanimate  forms,  all  phenomena, 
as  pervaded  by  a  common  life,  which  was  continuous  with 
and  similar  to  the  will-power  they  were  conscious  of  in 

1  See  Catlin’s  Norlh-Atnerican  Indians,  vol.  i,  for  initiations  and 

ordeals  among  the  Mandans. 

3  De  Err  ore,  c.  22. 

3  Oappare,  fivcrrai  rov  Oeov  <7f.aujop.kvov, 

Eorai  yap  t)plv  ek  i tovuiv  aujTijpia. 

4  Summarised  in  Themis,  pp.  68—71. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


125 


themselves.  This  mysterious  power  in  all  things  they 
called  Wakonda,  and  through  it  all  things  were  related 
to  man  and  to  each  other.  In  the  idea  of  the  continuity 
of  life  a  relation  was  maintained  between  the  seen  and 
the  unseen,  the  dead  and  the  living,  and  also  between 
the  fragment  of  anything  and  its  entirety.”  1  Thus  an 
Omaha  novice  might  at  any  time  seek  to  obtain  Wakonda 
by  what  was  called  the  rite  of  the  vision.  He  would  go 
out  alone,  fast,  chant  incantations,  and  finally  fall  into 
a  trance  (much  resembling  what  in  modern  times  has  been 
called  cosmic  consciousness)  in  which  he  would  perceive 
the  inner  relations  of  all  things  and  the  solidarity  of  the 
least  object  with  the  rest  of  the  universe. 

Another  rite  in  connexion  with  initiation,  and  common 
all  over  the  pagan  world — in  Greece,  America,  Africa, 
Australia,  New  Mexico,  etc. — w^as  the  daubing  of  the  novice 
all  over  with  clay  or  chalk  or  even  dung,  and  then  after 
a  while  removing  the  same.2 3  The  novice  must  have  looked 
a  sufficiently  ugly  and  uncomfortable  object  in  this  state  ; 
but  later,  when  he  was  thoroughly  washed ,  the  ceremony 
must  have  afforded  a  thrilling  illustration  of  the  idea  of 
a  new  birth,  and  one  which  would  dwell  in  the  minds  of 
the  spectators.  When  the  daubing  was  done  as  not  in¬ 
frequently  happened  with  white  clay  or  gypsum,  and 
the  ritual  took  place  at  night,  it  can  easily  be  imagined 
that  the  figures  of  young  men  and  boys  moving  about  in 
the  darkness  would  lend  support  to  the  idea  that  they 
were  spirits  belonging  to  some  intermediate  world — who 
had  already  passed  through  death  and  were  now  waiting 
for  their  second  birth  on  earth  (or  into  the  tribe)  which 
would  be  signalised  by  their  thorough  and  ceremonial 
washing.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Herodotus  (viii,  27) 
gives  a  circumstantial  account  of  how  the  Phocians  in 

1  A.  C.  Fletcher,  The  Significance  of  the  Scalp-lock,  Journal  of 

Anthropological  Studies,  xxvii  (1897-8),  p.  436. 

3  See  A.  Lang’s  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  i,  274  sq . 


126  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


a  battle  with  the  Thessalians  smeared  six  hundred  of  their 
bravest  warriors  with  white  clay  so  that,  looking  like 
supernatural  beings,  and  falling  upon  the  Thessalians 
by  night,  they  terrified  the  latter  and  put  them  to  instant 
flight. 

Such  then — though  very  scantily  described — were  some 
of  the  rites  of  Initiation  and  Second  Birth  celebrated  in 
the  old  Pagan  world.  The  subject  is  far  too  large  for 
adequate  treatment  within  the  present  limits  ;  but  even 
so  we  cannot  but  be  struck  by  the  appropriateness  in  many 
cases  of  the  teaching  thus  giving  to  the  young,  the  con¬ 
creteness  of  the  illustrations,  the  effectiveness  of  the 
symbols  used,  the  dramatic  character  of  the  rites,  the 
strong  enforcement  of  lessons  on  the  nature  and  duties 
of  the  life  into  which  the  candidates  were  about  to  enter. 
Christianity  followed  on,  and  inherited  these  traditions, 
but  one  feels  that  in  its  ceremonies  of  Baptism  and  Con¬ 
firmation,  which  of  course  correspond  to  the  Pagan 
Initiations,  it  falls  far  short  of  the  latter.  Its  ceremonies 
(certainly  as  we  have  them  to-day  in  Protestant  countries) 
are  of  a  very  milk-and-watery  character ;  all  allusion  to 
and  teaching  on  the  immensely  important  subject  of  Sex 
is  omitted,  the  details  of  social  and  industrial  morality 
are  passed  by,  and  instruction  is  limited  to  a  few  rather 
commonplace  lessons  in  general  morality  and  religion. 

It  may  be  appropriate  here,  before  leaving  the  subject 
of  the  Second  Birth,  to  inquire  how  it  has  come  about 
that  this  doctrine — so  remote  and  metaphysical  as  it  might 
appear — has  been  taken  up  and  embodied  in  their  creeds 
and  rituals  by  quite  primitive  people  all  over  the  world, 
to  such  a  degree  indeed  that  it  has  ultimately  been  adopted 
and  built  into  the  foundations  of  the  later  and  more 
intellectual  religions,  like  Hinduism,  Mithraism,  and  the 
Egyptian  and  Christian  cults.  1  think  the  answer  to 
this  question  must  be  found  in  the  now-familiar  fact  that 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


127 


the  earliest  peoples  felt  themselves  so  much  a  part  of 
Nature  and  the  animal  and  vegetable  world  around  them 
that  (whenever  they  thought  about  these  matters  at  all) 
they  never  for  a  moment  doubted  that  the  things  which 
were  happening  all  round  them  in  the  external  world  were 
also  happening  within  themselves.  They  saw  the  Sun, 
overclouded  and  nigh  to  death  in  winter,  come  to  its  birth 
again  each  year ;  they  saw  the  Vegetation  shoot  forth 
anew  in  spring — the  revival  of  the  spirit  of  the  Earth ; 
the  endless  breeding  of  the  Animals,  the  strange  trans¬ 
formations  of  Worms  and  Insects  ;  the  obviously  new  life 
taken  on  by  boys  and  girls  at  puberty  ;  the  same  at  a 
later  age  when  the  novice  was  transformed  into  the 
medicine-man — the  choupan  into  the  angakok  among  the 
Esquimaux,  the  Dacotah  youth  into  the  wakan  among 
the  Red  Indians ;  and  they  felt  in  their  sub-conscious 
way  the  same  everlasting  forces  of  rebirth  and  transform¬ 
ation  working  within  themselves.  In  some  of  the  Greek 
Mysteries  the  newly  admitted  Initiates  were  fed  for  some 
time  after  on  milk  only  “  as  though  we  were  being  born 
again.”  (See  Sallustius,  quoted  by  Gilbert  Murray.)  When 
sub-conscious  knowledge  began  to  glimmer  into  direct 
consciousness  one  of  the  first  aspects  (and  no  doubt  one 
of  the  truest)  under  which  people  saw  life  was  just  thus  : 
as  a  series  of  rebirths  and  transformations.1  The  most 
modern  science,  I  need  hardly  say,  in  biology  as  well  as 
in  chemistry  and  the  field  of  inorganic  Nature,  supports 
that  view.  The  savage  in  earliest  times  felt  the  truth  of 
some  things  which  we  to-day  are  only  beginning  intel¬ 
lectually  to  perceive  and  analyse. 

Christianity  adopted  and  absorbed — as  it  was  bound 
to  do — this  world-wide  doctiine  of  the  second  birth. 
Passing  over  its  physiological  and  biological  applications, 
it  gave  to  it  a  fine  spiritual  significance — or  rather  it  insisted 

1  The  fervent  and  widespread  belief  in  animal  metamorphoses 
among  early  peoples  is  well-known. 


128  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

especially  on  its  spiritual  significance,  which  (as  we  have 
seen)  had  been  widely  recognised  before.  Only — as  I 
suppose  must  happen  with  all  local  religions — it  narrowed 
the  application  and  outlook  of  the  doctrine  down  to  a 
special  case — “  As  in  Adam  all  die,  so  in  Christ  shall  all 
be  made  alive/’  -The  Universal  Spirit  which  can  give 
rebirth  and  salvation  to  every  child  of  man  to  whom  it 
comes,  was  offered  only  under  a  very  special  form— that 
of  Jesus  Christ.1  In  this  respect  it  was  no  better  than 
the  religions  which  preceded  it.  In  some  respects — that 
is,  where  it  was  especially  fanatical,  blinkered,  and  hostile 
to  other  sects — it  was  worse.  But  to  those  who  perceive 
that  the  Great  Spirit  may  bring  new  birth  and  salvation 
to  some  under  the  form  of  Osiris,  equally  wrell  as  to  others 
under  the  form  of  Jesus,  or  again  to  some  under  the  form 
of  a  Siberian  totem-Bear  equally  as  to  others  under  the 
form  of  Osiris,  these  questionings  and  narrowings  fall 
away  as  of  no  importance.  We  in  this  latter  day  can  see 
the  main  thing,  namely  that  Christianity  was  and  is  just 
one  phase  of  a  wrorld-old  religion,  slowly  perhaps  expanding 
its  scope,  but  whose  chief  attitudes  and  orientations 
have  been  the  same  through  the  centuries^ 

Many  other  illustrations  might  be  taken  of  the  truth 
of  this  view,  but  I  will  confine  myself  to  two  or  three  more. 
There  is  the  instance  of  the  Eucharist,  and  its  exceedingly 
widespread  celebration  (under  very  various  forms)  among 
the  pagans  all  over  the  world — as  well  as  among  Christians. 
I  have  already  said  enough  on  this  subject,  and  need  not 
delay  over  it.  By  partaking  of  the  sacramental  meal, 
even  in  its  wildest  and  crudest  shapes,  as  in  the  mysteries 
of  Dionysus,  one  was  identified  with  and  united  to  the 

1  The  same  happened  with  regard  to  another  great  Pagan  doctrine 
(to  which  I  have  just  alluded),  the  doctrine  of  transformations  and 
metamorphoses  ;  and  whereas  the  pagans  believed  in  these  things, 
as  the  common  and  possible  heritage  of  every  man,  the  Christians 
only  allowed  themselves  to  entertain  the  idea  in  the  special  and 
unique  instance  of  the  Transfiguration  of  Christ. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


129 


god ;  in  its  milder  and  more  spiritual  aspects  as  in  the 
Mithraic,  Egyptian,  Hindu  and  Christian  cults,  one  passed 
behind  the  veil  of  maya  and  this  ever-changing  world, 
and  entered  into  the  region  of  divine  peace  and  power.1 

Or  again  the  doctrine  of  the  Saviour.  That  also  is  one 
on  which  I  need  not  add  much  to  what  has  been  said 
already.  The  number  of  pagan  deities  (mostly  virgin- 
bom  and  done  to  death  in  some  way  or  other  in  their  efforts 
to  save  mankind)  is  so  great 2 3  as  to  be  difficult  to  keep 
account  of.  The  god  Krishna  in  India,  the  god  Indra 
in  Nepaul  and  Thibet,  spilt  their  blood  for  the  salvation 
of  men  ;  Buddha  said,  according  to  Max  Muller, 3  “  Let 
all  the  sins  that  were  in  the  world  fall  on  me,  that  the  world 
may  be  delivered  ”  ;  the  Chinese  Tien,  the  Holy  One — 
“  one  with  God  and  existing  with  him  from  all  eternity  " 
— died  to  save  the  world ;  the  Egyptian  Osiris  was  called 
Saviour,  so  was  Horus  ;  so  was  the  Persian  Mithras  ;  so 
was  the  Greek  Hercules  who  overcame  Death  though  his 
body  was  consumed  in  the  burning  garment  of  mortality, 
out  of  which  he  rose  into  heaven.  So  also  was  the  Phrygian 
Attis  called  Saviour,  and  the  Syrian  Tammuz  or  Adonis 
likewise — both  of  whom,  as  we  have  seen,  were  nailed 
or  tied  to  a  tree,  and  afterwards  rose  again  from  their 
biers  or  coffins.  Prometheus,  the  greatest  and  earliest 
benefactor  of  the  human  race,  was  nailed  by  the  hands 
and  feet,  and  with  arms  extended,  to  the  rocks  of  Mount 
Caucasus.  Bacchus  or  Dionysus,  bom  of  the  virgin  Semele 

1  Baring  Gould  in  his  Orig.  Relig.  Belief,  i.  401,  says  Among 
the  ancient  Hindus  Soma  was  a  chief  deity  ;  he  is  called  the  Giver 
of  Life  and  Health.  .  .  .  He  became  incarnate  among  men,  was 

taken  by  them  and  slain,  and  brayed  in  a  mortar  [a  god  of  corn  and 
wine  apparently].  But  he  rose  in  flame  to  heaven  to  be  ‘  the  Bene¬ 
factor  of  the  World  '  and  the  '  Mediator  between  God  and  Man.’ 
Through  communion  with  him  in  his  sacrifice,  man  (who  partook 
of  this  god)  has  an  assurance  of  immortality,  for  by  that  sacrament 
he  obtains  union  with  his  divinity." 

3  See  for  a  considerable  list  Doane’s  Bible  Myths,  ch.  xx. 

3  Hist .  Sanskrit  Literature,  p.  80.  , 

9 


180  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


to  be  the  Liberator  of  mankind  (Dionysus  Eleutherios  as 
he  was  called),  was  torn  to  pieces,  not  unlike  Osiris.  Even 
in  far  Mexico  Quetzalcoatl ,  the  Saviour,  was  born  of  a  virgin,' 
was  tempted,  and  fasted  forty  days,  was  done  to  death, 
and  his  second  coming  looked  for  so  eagerly  that  (as  is  well 
known)  when  Cortes  appeared,  the  Mexicans,  poor  things, 
greeted  him  as  the  returning  god  !  1  In  Peru  and  among 
the  American  Indians,  North  and  South  of'  the  Equator, 
similar  legends  are,  or  were,  to  be  found. 

Briefly  sketched  as  all  this  is,  it  is  enough  to  prove  quite 
abundantly  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Saviour  is  world-wide 
and  world-old,  and  that  Christianity  merely  appropriated 
the  same  and  (as  the  other  cults  did)  gave  it  a  special 
colour.  Probably  the  wide  range  of  this  doctrine  would 
have  been  far  better  and  more  generally  known,  had  not 
the  Christian  Church,  all  through,  made  the  greatest  of 
efforts  and  taken  the  greatest  precautions  to  extinguish 
and  snuff  out  all  evidence  of  pagan  claims  on  the  subject. 
There  is  much  to  show  that  the  early  Church  took  this 
line  with  regard  to  pre-Christian  saviours  2  ;  and  in  later 
times  the  same  policy  is  remarkably  illustrated  by  the 
treatment  in  the  sixteenth  century  of  the  writings  of 
Sahagun  the  Spanish  missionary — to  whose  work  I  have 
already  referred.  Sahagun  was  a  wonderfully  broad¬ 
minded  and  fine  man  who,  while  he  did  not  conceal  the 
barbarities  of  the  Aztec  religion,  was  truthful  enough  to 
point  out  redeeming  traits  in  the  manners  and  customs 
of  the  people  and  some  resemblances  to  Christian  doctrine 
and  practice.  This  infuriated  the  bigoted  Catholics  of 
the  newly  formed  Mexican  Church.  They  purloined  the 
manuscripts  of  Sahagun’s  Historia  and  scattered  and  hid 
them  about  the  country,  and  it  was  only  after  infinite 
labour  and  an  appeal  to  the  Spanish  Couit  that  he  got  them 
together  again.  Finally,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  having 

*  See  Kingsborough,  Mexican  Antiquities,  vol.  vi. 

2  See  Tertullian’s  Apologia ,  c.  16 ;  Ad  Nationes,  c.  xii, 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


131 


translated  them  into  Spanish  (from  the  original  Mexican) 
he  sent  them  in  two  big  volumes  home  to  Spain  for  safety  ; 
but  there  almost  immediately  they  disappeared,  and  could 
not  be  found  !  It  was  only  after  two  centuries  that  they 
ultimately  turned  up  (1790)  in  a  Convent  at  Tolosa  in 
Navarre.  Lord  Kingsborough  published  them  in  England 
in  1830. 

I  have  thus  dwelt  upon  several  of  the  main  doctrines 
of  Christianity — namely,  those  of  Sin  and  Sacrifice,  the 
Eucharist,  the  Saviour,  the  Second  Birth,  and  Trans¬ 
figuration — as  showing  that  they  are  by  110  means  unique 
in  our  religion,  but  were  common  to  nearly  all  the  religions 
of  the  ancient  world.  The  list  might  be  much  further 
extended,  but  there  is  no  need  to  delay  over  a  subject 
which  is  now  very  generally  understood.  I  will,  however, 
devote  a  page  or  two  to  one  instance,  which  I  think  is 
very  remarkable,  and  full  of  deep  suggestion. 

There  is  no  doctrine  in  Christianity  which  is  more 
reverenced  by  the  adherents  of  that  religion,  or  held  in 
higher  estimation,  than  that  God  sacrificed  his  only  Son 
for  the  salvation  of  the  world  ;  also  that  since  the  Son 
was  not  only  of  like  nature  but  of  the  same  nature  with 
the  Father,  and  equal  to  him  as  being  the  second  Person 
of  the  Divine  Trinity,  the  sacrifice  amounted  to  an 
immolation  of  Himself  for  the  good  of  mankind.  The 
doctrine  is  so  mystical,  so  remote,  and  in  a  sense  so  absurd 
and  impossible,  that  it  has  been  a  favorite  mark  through 
the  centuries  for  the  ridicule  of  the  scoffers  and  enemies 
of  the  Church  ;  and  here,  it  might  easily  be  thought,  is 
a  belief  which — whether  it  be  considered  glorious  or  whether 
contemptible — is  at  any  rate  unique,  and  peculiar  to  that 
Church. 

And  yet  the  extraordinary  fact  is  that  a  similar  belief 
ranges  all  through  the  ancient  religions,  and  can  be  traced 
back  to  the  earliest  times.  The  word  host  which  is  used 


132  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


in  the  Catholic  Mass  for  the  bread  and  wine  on  the  Altar, 
supposed  to  be  the  transubstantiated  body  and  blood  of 
Christ,  is  from  the  Latin  Hostia  which  the  dictionary 
interprets  as  "  an  animal  slain  in  sacrifice,  a  sin-off ering.” 
It  takes  us  far  far  back  to  the  Totem  stage  of  folk-life, 
when  the  tribe,  as  I  have  already  explained,  crowned  a 
victim-bull  or  bear  or  other  animal  with  flowers,  and 
honoring  it  with  every  offering  of  food  and  worship,  sacri¬ 
ficed  the  victim  to  the  Totem  spirit  of  the  tribe,  and 
consumed  it  in  an  Eucharistic  feast — the  medicine-man 
or  priest  wrho  conducted  the  ritual  wearing  a  skin  of  the 
same  beast  as  a  sign  that  he  represented  the  Totem- 
divinity,  taking  part  in  the  sacrifice  of  ‘  himself  to  him¬ 
self.’  It  reminds  us  of  the  Khonds  of  Bengal  sacrificing 
their  meriahs  crowned  and  decorated  as  gods  and  goddesses  ; 
of  the  Aztecs  doing  the  same  ;  of  Quetzalcoatl  pricking 
his  elbows  and  fingers  so  as  to  draw  blood,  which  he  offered 
on  his  own  altar ;  or  of  Odin  hanging  by  his  own  desire 
upon  a  tree.  “  I  know  I  was  hanged  upon  the  tree  shaken 
by  the  winds  for  nine  long  nights.  I  was  transfixed  by 
a  spear ;  I  was  vowed  to  Odin,  myself  to  myself.”  And 
so  on.  The  instances  are  endless.  “  I  am  the  oblation,” 
says  the  Lord  Krishna  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita,1  “  I  am 
the  sacrifice,  I  the  ancestral  offering.”  “  In  the  truly 
orthodox  conception  of  sacrifice,”  says  Elie  Reclus,3  “  the 
consecrated  offering,  be  it  man,  woman  or  virgin,  lamb 
or  heifer,  cock  or  dove,  represents  the  deity  himself.  .  .  . 
Brahma  is  the  ‘  imperishable  sacrifice  ’ ;  Indra,  Soma, 
Hari  and  the  other  gods,  became  incarnate  in  animals 
to  the  sole  end  that  they  might  be  immolated.  Purusha, 
the  Universal  Being,  caused  himself  to  be  slain  by  the 
Immortals,  and  from  his  substance  were  born  the  birds 
of  the  air,  wild  and  domestic  animals,  the  offerings  of 
butter  and  curds.  The  world,  declared  the  Risliis,  is  a 
series  of  sacrifices  disclosing  other  sacrifices.  To  stop 
1  Ch.  ix,  v.  1 6.  »  Primitive  Folk,  ch.  vi. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


188 


them  would  be  to  suspend  the  life  of  Nature.  The  god 
Siva,  to  whom  the  Tipperahs  of  Bengal  are  supposed  to 
have  sacrificed  as  many  as  a  thousand  human  victims 
a  year,  said  to  the  Brahmins  :  '  It  is  I  that  am  the  actual 
offering  ;  it  is  I  that  you  butcher  upon  my  altars/  ” 

It  was  in  allusion  to  this  doctrine  that  R.  W.  Emerson, 
paraphrasing  the  Katha-Upanishad,  wrote  that  immortal 
verse  of  his  : — 

If  the  red  slayer  thinks  he  slays, 

Or  the  slain  thinks  he  is  slain, 

They  know  not  well  the  subtle  ways 
I  take,  and  pass,  and  turn  again. 

I  say  it  is  an  astonishing  thing  to  think  and  realise  that 
this  profound  and  mystic  doctrine  of  the  eternal  sacrifice 
of  Himself,  ordained  by  the  Great  Spirit  for  the  creation 
and  salvation  of  the  world — a  doctrine  which  has  attracted 
and  fascinated  many  of  the  great  thinkers  and  nobler  minds 
of  Europe,  which  has  also  inspired  the  religious  teachings 
of  the  Indian  sages  and  to  a  less  philosophical  degree  the 
writings  of  the  Christian  Saints — should  have  been  seized 
in  its  general  outline  and  essence  by  rude  and  primitive 
people  before  the  dawn  of  history,  and  embodied  in  their 
rites  and  ceremonials.  What  is  the  explanation  of  this 
fact  ? 

It  is  very  puzzling.  The  whole  subject  is  puzzling. 
The  world-wide  adoption  of  similar  creeds  and  rituals 
(and,  we  may  add,  legends  and  fairy  tales)  among  early 
peoples,  and  in  far-sundered  places  and  times  is  so  remark¬ 
able  that  it  has  given  the  students  of  these  subjects 
*  furiously  to  think  ’  1 — yet  for  the  most  part  without 
great  success  in  the  way  of  finding  a  solution.  The  sup¬ 
position  that  (i)  the  creed,  rite  or  legend  in  question  has 
sprung  up,  so  to  speak,  accidentally,  in  one  place,  and 

1  See  A.  Lang’s  Myth ,  Ritual  and  Religion,  vol.  ii. 


134  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


then  has  traveled  (owing  to  some  inherent  plausibility) 
over  the  rest  of  the  world,  is  of  course  one  that  commends 
itself  readily  at  first  ;  but  on  closer  examination  the 
practical  difficulties  it  presents  are  certainly  very  great. 
These  include  the  migrations  of  customs  and  myths  in 
quite  early  ages  of  the  earth  across  trackless  oceans  and 
continents,  and  between  races  and  peoples  absolutely 
incapable  of  understanding  each  other.  And  if  to  avoid 
these  difficulties  it  is  assumed  that  the  present  human  race 
all  proceeds  from  one  original  stock  which  radiating  from 
one  centre — say  in  South-Eastern  Asia  1 — overspread  the 
world,  carrying  its  rites  and  customs  with  it,  why,  then 
we  are  compelled  to  face  the  difficulty  of  supposing  this 
radiation  to  have  taken  place  at  an  enormous  time  ago 
(the  continents  being  then  all  more  or  less  conjoined)  and 
at  a  period  when  it  is  doubtful  if  any  religious  rites  and 
customs  at  all  existed  ;  not  to  mention  the  further  difficulty 
of  supposing  all  the  four  or  five  hundred  languages  now 
existing  to  be  descended  from  one  common  source.  The 
far  tradition  of  the  Island  of  Atlantis  seems  to  afford  a 
possible  explanation  of  the  community  of  rites  and  customs 
between  the  Old  and  New  World,  and  this  without 
assuming  in  any  way  that  Atlantis  (if  it  existed)  was  the 
original  and  sole  cradle  of  the  human  race.2  Anyhow  it 
is  clear  that  these  origins  of  human  culture  must  be  of 
extreme  antiquity,  and  that  it  would  not  be  wise  to  be 
put  off  the  track  of  the  investigation  of  a  possible  common 
source  merely  by  that  fact  of  antiquity. 

A  second  supposition,  however,  is  (2)  that  the  natural 
psychological  evolution  of  the  human  mind  has  in  the 

1  See  Hastings,  Encycl.  Religion  and  Ethics,  art.  “  Ethnology.” 

a  E.  J.  Payne,  History  oj  the  New  World  called  America  (vol.  i, 
p.  93)  says  :  ”  It  is  certain  that  Europe  and  America  once  formed  a 
single  continent,”  but  inroads  of  the  sea  “  left  a  vast  island  or 
peninsula  stretching  from  Iceland  to  the  Azores — which  gradually  dis¬ 
appeared.”  Also  he  speaks  (i.  93)  of  the  ”  Miocene  Bridge  ”  between 
Siberia  and  the  New  World. 


PAGAN  INITIATIONS 


135 


various  times  and  climes  led  folk  of  the  most  diverse 
surroundings  and  heredity — and  perhaps  even  sprung  from 
separate  anthropoid  stocks — to  develop  their  social  and 
religious  ideas  along  the  same  general  lines — and  that 
even  to  the  extent  of  exhibiting  at  times  a  remarkable 
similarity  in  minute  details.  This  is  a  theory  which 
commends  itself  greatly  to  a  deeper  and  more  philosophical 
consideration ;  but  it  brings  us  up  point-blank  against 
another  most  difficult  question  (which  we  have  already 
raised),  namely,  how  to  account  for  extremely  rude  and 
primitive  peoples  in  the  far  past,  and  on  the  very  border¬ 
land  of  the  animal  life,  having  been  susceptible  to  the  germs 
of  great  religious  ideas  (such  as  we  have  mentioned)  and 
having  been  instinctively — though  not  of  course  by  any 
process  of  conscious  reasoning — moved  to  express  them 
in  symbols  and  rites  and  ceremonials,  and  (later  no  doubt) 
in  myths  and  legends,  which  satisfied  their  feelings  and 
sense  of  fitness — though  they  may  not  have  known  why — 
and  afterwards  were  capable  of  being  taken  up  and  embodied 
in  the  great  philosophical  religions. 

This  difficulty  almost  compels  us  to  a  view  of  human 
knowledge  which  has  found  supporters  among  some  able 
thinkers — the  view,  namely,  that  a  vast  store  of  knowledge 
is  already  contained  in  the  subconscious  mind  of  man 
(and  the  animals)  and  only  needs  the  provocation  of  outer 
experience  to  bring  it  to  the  surface  ;  and  that  in  the  second 
stage  of  human  psychology  this  process  of  crude  and 
piecemeal  externalisation  is  taking  place,  in  preparation 
for  the  final  or  third  stage  in  which  the  knowledge  will  be 
re-absorbed  and  become  direct  and  intuitional  on  a  high 
and  harmonious  plane — something  like  the  present  intuition 
of  the  animals  as  we  perceive  it  on  the  animal  plane. 
However  this  general  subject  is  one  on  which  I  shall 
touch  again,  and  I  do  not  propose  to  dwell  on  it  at  any 
length  now. 

There  is  a  third  alternative  theory  (3) — a  combination 


180  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


of  (i)  and  (2) — namely,  that  if  one  accepts  (2)  and  the 
idea  that  at  any  given  stage  of  human  development  there 
is  a  predisposition  to  certain  symbols  and  rites  belonging 
to  that  stage,  then  it  is  much  more  easy  to  accept  theory 
(ij  as  an  important  factor  in  the  spread  of  such  symbols 
and  rites  ;  for  clearly,  then,  the  smallest  germ  of  a  custom 
or  practice,  transported  from  one  country  or  people  to 
another  at  the  right  time,  would  be  sufficient  to  wake  the 
development  or  growth  in  question  and  stimulate  it  into 
activity.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  important 
point  towards  the  solution  of  this  whole  puzzling  question 
is  the  discussion  of  theory  (2) — and  to  this  theory,  as 
illustrated  by  the  world-wide  myth  of  the  Golden  Age, 
I  will  now  turn. 


IX 

MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 

The  tradition  of  a  “  Golden  Age  ”  is  widespread  over 
the  world,  and  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  at  any  length  into 
the  story  of  the  Garden  of  Eden  and  the  other  legends  which 
in  almost  every  country  illustrate  this  tradition.  Without 
indulging  in  sentiment  on  the  subject  we  may  hold  it  not 
unlikely  that  the  tradition- as  justified  by  the  remembrance, 
among  the  people  of  every  race,  of  a  pre-civilisation  period 
of  comparative  harmony  and  happiness  when  two  things, 
which  to-day  we  perceive  to  be  the  prolific  causes  of  discord 
and  misery,  were  absent  or  only  weakly  developed — namely, 
property  and  self -consciousness.1 

During  the  first  century  b.c.  there  was  a  great  spread 
of  Messianic  Ideas  over  the  Roman  world,  and  Virgil's 
4th  Eclogue,  commonly  called  the  Messianic  Eclogue, 
reflects  very  clearly  this  state  of  the  public  mind.  The 
expected  babe  in  the  poem  was  to  be  the  son  of  Octavian 
(Augustus)  the  first  Roman  emperor,  and  a  messianic  halo 
surrounded  it  in  Virgil’s  verse.  Unfortunately  it  turned 
out  to  be  a  girl  S  However  there  is  little  doubt  that  Virgil 
did — in  that  very  sad  age  of  the  world,  an  age  of  “  misery 
and  massacre,”  and  in  common  with  thousands  of  others 
—look  for  the  coming  of  a  great  ‘  redeemer.’  It  was  only 

1  For  a  fuller  working  out  of  this,  see  Civilisation  :  its  Cause  and 
Cure,  by  E.  Carpenter,  ch.  i. 


137 


188  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


a  few  years  earlier — about  B.c.  70 — that  the  great  revolt 
of  the  shamefully  maltreated  Roman  slaves  occurred, 
and  that  in  revenge  six  thousand  prisoners  from  Spartacus’ 
army  were  nailed  on  crosses  all  the  way  from  Rome  to 
Capua  (150  miles).  But  long  before  this  Hesiod  had 
recorded  a  past  Golden  Age  when  life  had  been  gracious 
in  communal  fraternity  and  joyful  in  peace,  when  human 
beings  and  animals  spoke  the  same  language,  when  death 
had  followed  on  sleep,  without  old  age  or  disease,  and 
after  death  men  had  moved  as  good  daimones  or  genii 
over  the  lands.  Pindar,  three  hundred  years  after  Hesiod, 
had  confirmed  the  existence  of  the  Islands  of  the  Blest, 
where  the  good  led  a  blameless,  tearless,  life.  Plato  the 
same,1  with  further  references  to  the  fabled  island  of 
Atlantis  ;  the  Egyptians  believed  in  a  former  golden  age 
under  the  god  Ra  to  which  they  looked  back  with  regret 
and  envy  ;  the  Persians  had  a  garden  of  Eden  similar  to 
that  of  the  Hebrews  ;  the  Greeks  a  garden  of  the  Hesperides, 
in  which  dwelt  the  serpent  whose  head  was  ultimately 
crushed  beneath  the  heel  of  Hercules  ;  and  so  on.  The 
references  to  a  supposed  far-back  state  of  peace  and 
happiness  are  indeed  numerous. 

So  much  so  that  latterly,  and  partly  to  explain  their 
prevalence,  a  theory  has  been  advanced  which  may  be 
worth  while  mentioning.  It  is  called  the  "  Theory  of 
intra-uterine  Blessedness,”  and,  remote  as  it  may  at  first 
appear,  it  certainly  has  some  claim  for  attention.  The 
theory  is  that  in  the  minds  of  mature  people  there  still 
remain  certain  vague  memories  of  their  pre-natal  days 
in  the  maternal  womb — memories  of  a  life  which,  though 
full  of  growing  vigour  and  vitality,  was  yet  at  that  time 
one  of  absolute  harmony  with  the  surroundings,  and  of 
perfect  peace  and  contentment,  spent  within  the  body  of 
the  mother — the  embryo  indeed  standing  in  the  same 

1  See  arts,  by  Margaret  Scholes,  Socialist  Review,  Nov.  and  Dec. 
1912. 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


130 


relation  to  the  mother  as  St.  Paul  says  we  stand  to  God, 
“  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  ”  ;  and 
that  these  vague  memories  of  the  intra- uterine  life  in  the 
individual  are  referred  back  by  the  mature  mind  to  a  past 
age  in  the  life  of  the  race.  Though  it  would  not  be  easy 
at  present  to  positively  confirm  this  theory,  yet  one  may 
say  that  it  is  neither  improbable  nor  unworthy  of  con¬ 
sideration  ;  also  that  it  bears  a  certain  likeness  to  the 
former  ones  about  the  Eden-gardens,  etc.  The  well-known 
parallelism  of  the  Individual  history  with  the  Race-history, 
the  “  recapitulation  "  by  the  embryo  of  the  development 
of  the  race,  does  in  fact  afford  an  additional  argument  for 
its  favorable  reception. 

These  considerations,  and  what  we  have  said  so  often 
in  the  foregoing  chapters  about  the  unity  of  the  Animals 
(and  Early  Man)  with  Nature,  and  their  instinctive  and 
agelong  adjustment  to  the  conditions  of  the  world  around 
them,  bring  us  up  hard  and  fast  against  the  following 
conclusions,  which  I  think  we  shall  find  difficult  to  avoid. 

We  all  recognise  the  extraordinary  grace  and  beauty, 
in  their  different  ways,  of  the  (wild)  animals ;  and  not 
only  their  beauty  but  the  extreme  fitness  of  their  actions 
and  habits  to  their  surroundings — their  subtle  and  pene¬ 
trating  Intelligence  in  fact.  Only  we  do  not  generally 
use  the  word  “  Intelligence.”  We  use  another  word 
(Instinct) — and  rightly  perhaps,  because  their  actions  are 
plainly  not  the  result  of  definite  self-conscious  reasoning, 
such  as  we  use,  carried  out  by  each  individual ;  but  are 
(as  has  been  abundantly  proved  by  Samuel  Butler  and 
others)  the  systematic  expression  of  experiences  gathered 
up  and  sorted  out  and  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation  in  the  bosom  of  the  race — an  Intelligence  in 
fact,  or  Insight,  of  larger  subtler  scope  than  the  other, 
and  belonging  to  the  tribal  or  racial  Being  rather  than  to 
the  isolated  individual — a  super-consciousness  in  fact, 
ramifying  afar  in  space  and  time. 


140  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


But  if  we  allow  (as  we  must)  this  unity  and  perfection 
of  nature,  and  this  somewhat  cosmic  character  of  the 
mind,  to  exist  among  the  Animals,  we  can  hardly  refuse 
to  believe  that  there  must  have  been  a  period  when  Man, 
too,  hardly  as  ■  yet  differentiated  from  them,  did  himself 
possess  these  same  qualities — perhaps  even  in  greater 
degree  than  the  animals — of  grace  and  beauty  of  body, 
perfection  of  movement  and  action,  instinctive  perception 
and  knowledge  (of  course  in  limited  spheres)  ;  and  a 
period  when  he  possessed  above  all  a  sense  of  unity  with 
his  fellows  and  with  surrounding  Nature  which  became 
the  ground  of  a  common  consciousness  between  himself 
and  his  tribe,  similar  to  that  which  Maeterlinck,  in  the 
case  of  the  Bees,  calls  the  Spirit  of  the  Hive.1  It  would 
be  difficult,  nay  impossible,  to  suppose  that  human  beings 
on  their  first  appearance  formed  an  entire  exception  in 
the  process  of  evolution,  or  that  they  were  completely 
lacking  in  the  very  graces  and  faculties  wffiich  we  so  admire 
in  the  animals — only  of  course  we  see  that  (like  the  animals) 
they  would  not  be  seZ/-conscious  in  these  matters,  and  what 
perception  they  had  of  their  relations  to  each  other  or  to 
the  world  around  them  would  be  largely  inarticulate  and 
sw6-conscious — though  none  the  less  real  for  that. 

Let  us  then  grant  this  preliminary  assumption — and 
it  clearly  is  not  a  large  or  hazardous  one — and  what 
follows  ?  It  follows — since  to-day  discord  is  the  rule, 
and  Man  has  certainly  lost  the  grace,  both  physical  and 
mental,  of  the  animals — that  at  some  period  a  break  must 
have  occurred  in  the  evolution-process,  a  discontinuity — 
similar  perhaps  to  that  which  occurs  in  the  life  of  a  child 
at  the  moment  when  it  is  born  into  the  world.  Humanity 
took  a  new  departure  ;  but  a  departure  which  for  the 
moment  was  signalised  as  a  loss — the  loss  of  its  former 

1  See  The  Life  of  the  Bee  by  Maurice  Maeterlinck  ;  and  for  numerous 
similar  cases  among  other  animals,  P.  Kropotkin’s  Mutual  Aid  i  a 
\actor  in  Evolution. 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


141 


harmony  and  self-adjustment.  And  the  cause  or  accom¬ 
paniment  of  this  change  was  the  growth  of  Self-consciousness. 
Into  the  general  consciousness  of  the  tribe  (in  relation  to 
its  environment)  which,  in  fact,  had  constituted  the 
mentality  of  the  animals  and  of  man  up  to  this  stage, 
there  now  was  intruded  another  kind  of  consciousness, 
a  consciousness  centering  round  each  little  individual 
self  and  concerned  almost  entirely  with  the  interests  of 
the  latter.  Here  was  evidently  a  threat  to  the  continuance 
of  the  former  happy  conditions.  It  was  like  the  appear¬ 
ance  of  innumerable  little  ulcers  in  a  human  body — a 
menace  which  if  continued  would  inevitably  lead  to  the 
break-up  of  the  body.  It  meant  the  loss  of  tribal  harmony 
and  nature-adjustment.  It  meant  instead  of  unity  a 
myriad  conflicting  centres  ;  it  meant  alienation  from  the 
spirit  of  the  tribe,  the  separation  of  man  from  man,  discord, 
recrimination,  and  the  fatal  unfolding  of  the  sense  of  sin. 
The  process  symbolised  itself  in  the  legend  of  the  Fall. 
Man  ate  of  the  Tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil. 
Sometimes  people  wonder  why  knowledge  of  any  kind 
— and  especially  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil — should 
have  brought  a  curse.  But  the  reason  is  obvious.  Into 
the  placid  and  harmonious  life  of  the  animal  and  human 
tribes  fulfilling  their  days  in  obedience  to  the  slow 
evolutions  and  age-long  mandates  of  nature,  Self-con¬ 
sciousness  broke  with  its  inconvenient  and  impossible 
query :  “  How  do  these  arrangements  suit  me  ?  Are 
they  good  for  me,  are  they  evil  for  me  ?  I  want  to  know. 
I  will  know  ”  Evidently  knowledge  (such  knowledge  as 
wre  understand  by  the  word)  only  began,  and  could  only 
begin,  by  queries  relating  to  the  little  local  self.  There 
was  no  other  way  for  it  to  begin.  Knowledge  and  self- 
consciousness  wrere  born,  as  twins,  together.  Knowledge 
therefore  meant  Sin 1  ;  for  self-consciousness  meant  sin 

1  Compare  also  other  myths,  like  Cupid  and  Psyche,  Lohengrin, 
etc.,  in  which  a  fatal  curiosity  leads  to  tragedy. 


142  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


(and  it  means  sin  to-day).  Sin  is  Separation.  That  is 
probably  (though  disputed)  the  etymology  of  the  word — 
that  which  sunders .*  The  essence  of  sin  is  one's  separation 
from  the  whole  (the  tribe  or  the  god)  of  which  one  is 
a  part.  And  knowledge — which  separates  subject  from 
object,  and  in  its  inception  is  necessarily  occupied  with 
the  '  good  and  evil  *  of  the  little  local  self,  is  the  great 
engine  of  this  separation.  [Mark  !  I  say  nothing  against 
this  association  of  Self-consciousness  with  '  Sin  '  (so-called) 
and  ‘  Knowledge  *  (so-called).  The  growth  of  all  three 
together  is  an  absolutely  necessary  part  of  human  evolution, 
and  to  rail  against  it  would  be  absurd.  But  we  may  as 
well  open  our  eyes  and  see  the  fact  straight  instead  of 
blinking  it.]  The  culmination  of  the  process  and  the 
fulfilment  of  the  *  curse  ’  we  may  watch  to-day  in  the 
towering  expansion  of  the  self-conscious  individualised 
Intellect — science  as  the  handmaid  of  human  Greed 
devastating  the  habitable  world  and  destroying  its  un¬ 
worthy  civilisation.  And  the  process  must  go  on — 
necessarily  must  go  on — until  Self-consciousness,  ceasing 
its  vain  quest  (vain  in  both  senses)  for  the  separate  domin¬ 
ation  of  life,  surrenders  itself  back  again  into  the  arms 
of  the  Mother-consciousness  from  which  it  originally  sprang 
• — surrenders  itself  back,  not  to  be  merged  in  nonentity, 
but  to  be  affiliated  in  loving  dependence  on  and  harmony 
with  the  cosmic  life. 

All  this  I  have  dealt  with  in  far  more  detail  in  Civilisation  : 
its  Cause  and  Cure,  and  in  The  Art  of  Creation  ;  but  I  have 
only  repeated  the  outline  of  it  as  above,  because  some 
such  outline  is  necessary  for  the  proper  ordering  and 
understanding  of  the  points  which  follow. 

We  are  not  concerned  now  with  the  ultimate  effects  of 
the  ‘  Fall '  of  Man  or  with  the  present-day  fulfilment  of 

1  German  Siinde,  sin,  and  sonder,  separated  ;  Dutch  zonde,  sin  ; 
Latin  sons,  guilty.  Not  unlikely  that  the  German  root  SUhn,  ex¬ 
piation,  is  connected  ;  Siihn-bock ,  a  scape-goat 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


148 


the  Eden-curse.  What  we  want  to  understand  is  how  the 
'  Fall  *  into  self-consciousness  led  to  that  great  panorama 
of  Ritual  and  Religion  which  we  have  very  briefly 
described  and  summarised  in  the  preceding  chapters  of 
this  book.  We  want  for  the  present  to  fix  our  attention 
on  the  commencement  of  that  process  by  which  man  lapsed 
away  from  his  living  community  with  Nature  and  his 
fellows  into  the  desert  of  discord  and  toil,  while  the  angels 
of  the  flaming  sword  closed  the  gates  of  Paradise  behind 
him. 

It  is  evident  I  think  that  in  that  ‘  golden  '  stage  when 
man  was  simply  the  crown  and  perfection  of  the  animals 
— and  it  is  hardly  possible  to  refuse  the  belief  in  such  a 
stage — he  possessed  in  reality  all  the  essentials  of  Religion.1 
It  is  not  necessary  to  sentimentalise  over  him  ;  he  was 
probably  raw  and  crude  in  his  lusts  of  hunger  and  of  sex  ; 
he  was  certainly  ignorant  and  superstitious ;  he  loved 
fighting  with  and  persecuting  ‘  enemies  ’  (which  things  of 
course  all  religions  to-day — except  perhaps  the  Buddhist 
— love  to  do)  ;  he  was  dominated  often  by  unreasoning  Fear, 
and  was  consequently  cruel.  Yet  he  w’as  full  of  that 
Faith  which  the  animals  have  to  such  an  admirable  degree 
— unhesitating  faith  in  the  inner  promptings  of  his  own 
nature  ;  he  had  the  joy  which  comes  of  abounding  vitality, 
springing  up  like  a  fountain  whose  outlet  is  free  and  un¬ 
hindered  ;  he  rejoiced  in  an  untroubled  and  unbroken 
sense  of  unity  with  his  Tribe,  and  in  elaborate  social  and 
friendly  institutions  within  its  borders  ;  he  had  a  marvelous 
sense-acuteness  towards  Nature  and  a  gift  in  that  direction 
verging  towards  “  second-sight  ”  ;  strengthened  by  a 
conviction — which  had  never  become  conscious  because 
it  had  never  been  questioned — of  his  own  personal  relation 

1  See  S.  Reinach,  Cults,  Myths,  etc.,  introduction  :  "  The  primitive 
life  of  humanity,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  purely  animal,  is  religious. 
Religion  is  the  parent  stem  which  has  thrown  off,  one  by  one,  art, 
agriculture,  law,  morality,  politics,  etc." 


144  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


to  the  things  outside  him,  the  Earth,  the  Sky,  the  Vege¬ 
tation,  the  Animals.  Of  such  a  Man  we  get  glimpses  in 
the  far  past— though  indeed  only  glimpses,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  all  our  knowledge  of  him  comes  through  civilised 
channels ;  and  wherever  civilisation  has  touched  these 
early  peoples  it  has  already  withered  and  corrupted  them, 
even  before  it  has  had  the  sense  to  properly  observe  them. 
It  is  sufficient,  however,  just  to  mention  peoples  like  some 
of  the  early  Pacific  Islanders,  the  Zulus  and  Kafirs  of 
South  Africa,  the  Fans  of  the  Congo  Region  (of  whom 
Winwood  Reade  1  speaks  so  highly),  some  of  the  Malaysian 
and  Himalayan  tribes,  the  primitive  Chinese,  and  even 
the  evidence  with  regard  to  the  neolithic  peoples  of  Europe,2 
in  order  to  show  what  I  mean. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  best  ideas  of  the  gulf  of  difference 
between  the  semi-civilised  and  the  quite  primal  man  is 
given  by  A.  R.  Wallace  in  his  Life  (vol.  i,  p.  288)  :  “  A  most 
unexpected  sensation  of  surprise  and  delight  was  my  first 
meeting  and  living  with  man  in  a  state  of  nature— with 
absolute  uncontaminated  savages !  This  wTas  on  the 
Uaupes  river.  .  .  .  They  were  all  going  about  their  own 
work  or  pleasure,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  white 
men  or  their  ways  ;  they  walked  with  the  free  step  of 
the  independent  forest-dweller  .  .  .  original  and  self-sus¬ 
taining  as  the  wild  animals  of  the  forests,  absolutely  inde¬ 
pendent  of  civilisation  .  .  .  living  their  own  lives  in  their 
own  way,  as  they  had  done  for  countless  generations  before 
America  was  discovered.  Indeed  the  true  denizen  of  the 
Amazonian  forests,  like  the  forest  itself,  is  unique  and 
not  to  be  forgotten/’  Elsewhere  3  Wallace  speaks  of 
the  quiet,  good-natured,  inoffensive  character  of  these 
copper-coloured  peoples,  and  of  their  quickness  of  hand 
and  skill,  and  continues :  “  their  figures  are  generally 

*  Savage  A,rica,  ch.  xxxvii. 

3  See  Kropotkin’s  Mutual  Aid,  ch.  iii. 

3  Travels  on  the  Amazon  (1853),  ch.  xvii., 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


145 


superb  ;  and  I  have  never  felt  so  much  pleasure  in  gazing 
at  the  finest  statue  as  at  these  living  illustrations  of  the 
beauty  of  the  human  form.” 

Though  some  of  the  peoples  just  mentioned  may  be 
said  to  belong  to  different  grades  or  stages  of  human 
evolution  and  physically  some  no  doubt  were  far  superior 
to  others,  yet  they  mostly  exhibit  this  simple  grace  of  the 
bodily  and  mental  organism,  as  well  as  that  closeness  of 
tribal  solidarity  of  which  I  have  spoken.  The  immense 
antiquity  of  the  clan  organisation ,  as  shown  by  investi¬ 
gations  into  early  marriage,  points  to  the  latter  conclusion. 
Travelers  among  Bushmen,  Hottentots,  Fuegians,  Esqui¬ 
maux,  Papuans  and  other  peoples — peoples  who  have  been 
pushed  aside  into  unfavorable  areas  by  the  invasion  of 
more  warlike  and  better-equipped  races,  and  who  have 
suffered  physically  in  consequence — confirm  this.  Kropot¬ 
kin,  speaking  of  the  Hottentots,  quotes  the  German  author 
P.  Kolben  who  traveled  among  them  in  1725  or  so.  “  He 
knew  the  Hottentots  well  and  did  not  pass  by  their  defects 
in  silence,  but  could  not  praise  their  tribal  morality  highly 
enough.  Their  word  is  sacred,  he  wrote,  they  know  nothing 
of  the  corruption  and  faithless  arts  of  Europe.  They 
live  in  great  tranquillity  and  are  seldom  at  war  with  their 
neighbours,  and  are  all  kindness  and  goodwill  to  one 
another.”  1  Kropotkin  further  says :  “  Let  me  remark 
that  when  Kolben  says  ‘  they  are  certainly  the  most  friendly, 
the  most  liberal  'and  the  most  benevolent  people  to  one 
another  that  ever  appeared  on  the  earth ’  he  wrote  a 
sentence  which  has  continually  appeared  since  in  the 
description  of  savages.  When  first  meeting  with  primitive 
races,  the  Europeans  usually  make  a  caricature  of  their 
life  ;  but  when  an  intelligent  man  has  stayed  among  them 

1  P.  Kropotkin,  Mutual  Aid,  p.  90.  W.  J.  Sollas  also  speaks  in 
terms  of  the  highest  praise  of  the  Bushmen — “  their  energy,  patience, 
courage,  loyalty,  affection,  good  manners  and  artistic  sense  "  {Ancient 
Hunters ,  1915,  p.  425). 


10 


146  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


for  a  longer  time  he  generally  describes  them  as  the 
‘  kindest '  or  the  '  gentlest  *  race  on  the  earth.  These 
very  same  words  have  been  applied  to  the  Ostyaks,  the 
Samoyedes,  the  Eskimos,  the  Dayaks,  the  Aleoutes,  the 
Papuas,  and  so  on,  by  the  highest  authorities.  I  also 
remember  having  read  them  applied  to  the  Tunguses, 
the  Tchuktchis,  the  Sioux,  and  several  others.  The  very 
frequency  of  that  high  commendation  already  speaks 
volumes  in  itself.”  1 2 

Many  of  the  tribes,  like  the  Aleonts,  Eskimos,  Dyaks, 
Papuans,  Fuegians,  etc.,  are  themselves  in  the  Neolithic 
stage  of  culture — though  for  the  reason  given  above 
probably  degenerated  physically  from  the  standard  of 
their  neolithic  ancestors  ;  and  so  the  conclusion  is  forced 
upon  one  that  there  must  have  been  an  immense  period ,3 
prior  to  the  first  beginnings  of  ‘  civilisation,’  in  which  the 
human  tribes  in  general  led  a  peaceful  and  friendly  life 
on  the  earth,  comparatively  little  broken  up  by  dissensions, 
in  close  contact  with  Nature  and  in  that  degree  of  sympathy 
with  and  understanding  of  the  Animals  which  led  to  the 
establishment  of  the  Totem  system.  Though  it  would 
be  absurd  to  credit  these  tribes  with  any  great  degree 
of  comfort  and  well-being  according  to  our  modern 
standards,  yet  we  may  well  suppose  that  the  memory 
of  this  long  period  lingered  on  for  generations  and  gener¬ 
ations  and  was  ultimately  idealised  into  the  Golden  Age, 
in  contrast  to  the  succeeding  period  of  everlasting  warfare, 
rancour  and  strife,  which  came  in  with  the  growth  of 
Property  with  its  greeds  and  jealousies,  and  the  accen- 

1  Ibid,  p.  91. 

2  See  for  estimates  of  periods  infra  ch.  xiii ;  also,  for  the  peaceful¬ 
ness  of  these  early  peoples,  Havelock  Ellis  on  “  The  Origin  of  War,” 
where  he  says  “  We  do  not  find  the  weapons  of  warfare  or  the  wounds 
of  warfare  among  these  Palaeolithic  remains  ...  it  was  with  civi¬ 
lisation  that  the  art  of  killing  developed,  i.e.  within  the  last  10,000  or 

12,000  years  when  Neolithic  men  (who  became  our  ancestors)  were 
just  arriving.” 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE  147 

tuation  of  Self-consciousness  with  all  its  vanities  and 
ambitions. 

I  say  that  each  tribe  at  this  early  stage  of  development 
had  within  it  the  essentials  of  what  we  call  Religion — namely 
a  bedrock  sense  of  its  community  with  Nature,  and  of 
the  Common  life  among  its  members — a  sense  so  intimate 
and  fundamental  that  it  was  hardly  aware  of  itself  (any 
more  than  the  fish  is  aware  of  the  sea  in  which  it  lives), 
but  yet  was  really  the  matrix  of  tribal  thought  and  the 
spring  of  tribal  action.  It  was  this  sense  of  unity  which 
was  destined  by  the  growth  of  self-consciousness  to  come 
to  light  and  evidence  in  the  shape  of  all  manner  of  rituals 
and  ceremonials  ;  and  by  the  growth  of  the  imaginative 
intellect  to  embody  itself  in  the  figures  and  forms  of  all 
manner  of  deities. 

Let  us  examine  into  this  a  little  more  closely.  A  lark 
soaring  in  the  eye  of  the  sun,  and  singing  rapt  between 
its  “  heaven  and  home  ”  realises  no  doubt  in  actuai  fact 
all  that  those  two  words  mean  to  us  ;  yet  its  realisation 
is  quite  subconscious.  It  does  not  define  its  own  experi¬ 
ence  :  it  feels  but  it  does  not  think.  In  order  to  come  to 
the  stage  of  thinking  it  would  perhaps  be  necessary  that 
the  lark  should  be  exiled  from  the  earth  and  the  sky,  and 
confined  in  a  cage.  Early  Man  felt  the  great  truths  and 
realities  of  Life — often  I  believe  more  purely  than  we  do 
— but  he  could  not  give  form  to  his  experience.  That 
stage  came  when  he  began  to  lose  touch  with  these  realities  ; 
and  it  showed  itself  in  rites  and  ceremonials.  The  inbreak 
of  self-consciousness  brought  out  the  facts  of  his  inner 
life  into  ritualistic  and  afterwards  into  intellectual  forms. 

Let  me  give  examples.  For  a  long  time  the  Tribe  is 
all  in  all ;  the  individual  is  completely  subject  to  the 
'  Spirit  of  the  Hive  ’  ;  he  does  not  even  think  of  contra¬ 
vening  it.  Then  the  day  comes  when  self-interest,  as 
apart  from  the  Tribe,  becomes  sufficiently  strong  to  drive 
him  against  some  tribal  custom.  He  breaks  the  tabu ; 


148  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


he  eats  the  forbidden  apple  ;  he  sins  against  the  tribe, 
and  is  cast  out.  Suddenly  he  finds  himself  an  exile,  lonely, 
contemned  and  deserted.  A  horrible  sense  of  distress 
seizes  him — something  of  which  he  had  no  experience 
before.  He  tries  to  think  about  it  all,  to  understand  the 
situation,  but  is  dazed  and  cannot  arrive  at  any  conclusion. 
His  one  necessity  is  Reconciliation,  Atonement,  He  finds 
he  cannot  live  outside  of  and  alienated  from  his  tribe.  He 
makes  a  Sacrifice,  an  offering  to  his  fellows,  as  a  seal  of 
sincerity — an  offering  of  his  own  bodily  suffering  or  precious 
blood,  or  the  blood  of  some  food-animal,  or  some  valuable 
gift  or  other — if  only  he  may  be  allowed  to  return.  The 
offering  is  accepted.  The  ritual  is  performed ;  and  he 
is  received  back.  I  have  already  spoken  of  this  perfectly 
natural  evolution  of  the  twin-ideas  of  Sin  and  Sacrifice, 
so  I  need  not  enlarge  upon  the  subject.  But  two  things 
we  may  note  here  :  (i)  that  the  ritual,  being  so  concrete 
(and  often  severe),  graves  itself  on  the  minds  of  those 
concerned,  and  expresses  the  feelings  of  the  tribe,  with 
an  intensity  and  sharpness  of  outline  which  no  words  could 
rival,  and  (2)  that  such  rituals  may  have,  and  probably 
did,  come  into  use  even  while  language  itself  was  in  an 
infantile  condition  and  incapable  of  dealing  with  the 
psychological  situation  except  by  symbols.  They,  the 
rituals,  were  the  first  effort  of  the  primitive  mind  to  get 
beyond  subconscious  feeling  and  emerge  into  a  world  of 
forms  and  definite  thought. 

Let  us  carry  the  particular  instance,  given  above,  a 
stage  farther,  even  to  the  confines  of  abstract  Thought 
and  Philosophy.  I  have  spoken  of  “  The  Spirit  of  the 
Hive  ”  as  if  the  term  were  applicable  to  the  Human  as 
well  as  to  the  Bee  tribe.  The  individual  bee  obviously 
has  never  thought  about  that  ‘  Spirit/  nor  mentally  under¬ 
stood  what  Maeterlinck  means  by  it  ;  and  yet  in  terms 
of  actual  experience  it  is  an  intense  reality  to  the  bee 
(ordaining  for  instance  on  some  fateful  day  the  slaughter 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


149 


of  all  the  drones),  controlling  bee-movements  and  bee- 
moralitv  generally.  The  individual  tribesman  similarly 
steeped  in  the  age-long  human  life  of  his  fellows  has  never 
thought  of  the  Tribe  as  an  ordaining  being  or  Spirit,  separate 
from  himself—  till  that  day  when  he  is  exiled  and  outcast 
from  it.  Then  he  sees  himself  and  the  tribe  as  two  opposing 
beings,  himself  of  course  an  Intelligence  or  Spirit  in  his 
own  limited  degree,  the  Tribe  as  a  much  greater  Intelligence 
or  Spirit,  standing  against  and  over  him.  From  that  day 
the  conception  of  a  god  arises  on  him.  It  may  be  only 
a  totem-god — a  divine  Grizzly-Bear  or  what  not — but 
still  a  god  or  supernatural  Presence,  embodied  in  the  life 
of  the  tribe.  This  is  what  Sin  has  taught  him.1  This  is 
what  Fear,  founded  on  self-consciousness,  has  revealed  to 
him.  The  revelation  may  be  true,  or  it  may  be  fallacious 
(I  do  not  prejudge  it)  ;  but  there  it  is — the  beginning  of 
that  long  series  of  human  evolutions  which  we  call  Religion. 

[For  when  the  human  mind  has  reached  that  stage  of 
consciousness  in  which  each  man  realises  his  own  *  self  * 
as  a  rational  and  consistent  being,  “  looking  before  and 
after/’  then,  as  I  have  said  already,  the  mind  projects 
on  the  background  of  Nature  similarly  rational  Presences 
which  we  may  call  ‘  Gods  ’  ;  and  at  that  stage  ‘  Religion  9 
begins.  Before  that,  when  the  mind  is  quite  unformed 
and  dream-like,  and  consists  chiefly  of  broken  and  scattered 
rays,  and  w-hen  distinct  self-consciousness  is  hardly  yet 
developed,  then  the  presences  imagined  in  Nature  are 
merely  flickering  and  intermittent  phantoms,  and  their 
propitiation  and  placation  comes  more  properly  under 
the  head  of  *  Magic.'] 

So  much  for  the  genesis  of  the  religious  ideas  of  Sin 

1  It  is  to  be  noted,  in  that  charming  idyll  of  the  Eden  garden,  that 
it  is  only  after  eating  of  the  forbidden  fruit  that  Adam  and  Eve  per¬ 
ceive  the  Lord  God  walking  in  the  garden,  and  converse  with  him 
Genesis  iii.  8). 


150  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  Sacrifice,  and  the  rites  connected  with  these  ideas — 
their  genesis  through  the  in-break  of  self-consciousness 
upon  the  corporate  sub-consciousness  of  the  life  of  the 
Community.  But  an  exactly  similar  process  may  be 
observed  in  the  case  of  the  other  religious  ideas. 

I  spoke  of  the  doctrine  of  the  second  birth ,  and  the  rites 
connected  with  it  both  in  Paganism  and  in  Christianity. 
There  is  much  to  show  that  among  quite  primitive  peoples 
there  is  less  of  shrinking  from  death  and  more  of  certainty 
about  a  continued  life  after  death  than  we  generally  find 
among  more  intellectual  and  civilised  folk.  It  is,  or  has 
been,  quite  common  among  many  tribes  for  the  old  and 
decrepit,  who  are  becoming  a  burden  to  their  fellows, 
to  offer  themselves  for  happy  dispatch,  and  to  take  willing 
part  in  the  ceremonial  preparations  for  their  own  extinc¬ 
tion  ;  and  this  readiness  is  encouraged  by  their  naive 
and  untroubled  belief  in  a  speedy  transference  to  “  happy 
hunting-grounds  ”  beyond  the  grave.  The  truth  is  that 
when,  as  in  such  cases,  the  tribal  life  is  very  whole  and 
unbroken — each  individual  identifying  himself  completely 
with  the  tribe — the  idea  of  the  individual’s  being  dropped 
out  at  death,  and  left  behind  by  the  tribe,  hardly  arises. 
The  individual  is  the  tribe,  has  no  other  existence.  The 
tribe  goes  on,  living  a  life  which  is  eternal,  and  only  changes 
its  hunting-grounds  ;  and  the  individual,  identified  with 
the  tribe,  feels  in  some  subconscious  way  the  same  about 
himself. 

But  when  one  member  has  broken  faith  with  the  tribe, 
when  he  has  sinned  against  it  and  become  an  outcast— 
ah  !  then  the  terrors  of  death  and  extinction  loom  large 
upon  him.  “  The  wrages  of  sin  is  death.”  There  conies 
a  period  in  the  evolution  of  tribal  life  when  the  primitive 
bonds  are  loosening,  when  the  tendency  towards  Stf//-will 
and  ^//-determination  (so  necessary  of  course  in  the  long 
run  for  the  evolution  of  humanity)  becomes  a  real  danger 
to  the  tribe,  and  a  terror  to  the  wise  men  and  elders  of 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


151 


the  community.  It  is  seen  that  the  children  inherit  this 
tendency— even  from  their  infancy.  They  are  no  longer 
mere  animals,  easily  herded  ;  it  seems  that  they  are  bom 
in  sin — or  at  least  in  ignorance  and  neglect  of  their  tribal 
life  and  calling.  The  only  cure  is  that  they  must  be  born 
again.  They  must  deliberately  and  of  set  purpose  be 
adopted  into  the  tribe,  and  be  made  to  realise,  even  severely, 
in  their  own  persons  what  is  happening.  They  must  go 
through  the  initiations  necessary  to  impress  this  upon 
them.  Thus  a  whole  series  of  solemn  rites  spring  up, 
different  no  doubt  in  every  locality,  but  all  having  the 
same  object  and  purpose.  [And  one  can  understand  how 
the  necessity  of  such  initiations  and  second  birth  may 
easily  have  made  itself  felt  in  every  race,  at  some  stage 
of  its  evolution — and  that  quite  as  a  spontaneous  growth, 
and  independently  of  any  contagion  of  example  caught 
from  other  races.] 

The  same  may  be  said  about  the  world-wide  practice 
of  the  Eucharist.  No  more  effective  method  exists  for 
impressing  on  the  members  of  a  body  their  community 
of  life  with  each  other,  and  causing  them  to  forget  their 
jangling  self-interests,  than  to  hold  a  feast  in  common. 
It  is  a  method  which  has  been  honoured  in  all  ages  as  well 
as  to-day.  But  when  the  flesh  partaken  of  at  the  feast 
is  that  of  the  Totem — the  guardian  and  presiding  genius 
of  the  tribe — or  perhaps  of  one  of  its  chief  food-animals — 
then  clearly  the  feast  takes  on  a  holy  and  solemn  character. 
It  becomes  a  sacrament  of  unity — of  the  unity  of  all  with 
the  tribe,  and  with  each  other.  Self-interests  and  self- 
consciousnesses  are  for  the  time  submerged,  and  the 
common  life  asserts  itself ;  but  here  again  we  see  that  a 
custom  like  this  would  not  come  into  being  as  a  deliberate 
rite  until  self-consciousness  and  the  divisions  consequent 
thereon  had  grown  to  be  an  obvious  evil.  The  herd- 
animals  (cows,  sheep,  and  so  forth)  do  not  have  Eucharists, 


152  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


simply  because  they  are  sensible  enough  to  feed  along  the 
same  pastures  without  quarrelling  over  the  richest  tufts 
of  grass. 

When  the  flesh  partaken  of  (either  actually  or  sym¬ 
bolically)  is  not  that  of  a  divinised  animal,  but  the  flesh 
of  a  human-formed  god — as  in  the  mysteries  of  Dionysus 
or  Osiris  or  Christ — then  we  are  led  to  suspect  (and  of 
course  this  theory  is  widely  held  and  supported)  that  the 
rites  date  from  a  very  far-back  period  when  a  human 
being,  as  representative  of  the  tribe,  was  actually  slain, 
dismembered  and  partly  devoured  ;  though  as  time  went 
on,  the  rite  gradually  became  glossed  over  and  mitigated 
into  a  love-communion  through  the  sharing  of  bread  and 
wine. 

It  is  curious  anyhow  that  the  dismemberment  or  division 
into  fragments  of  the  body  of  a  god  (as  in  the  case  of 
Dionysus,  Osiris,  Attis,  Prajapati  and  others)  should  be  so 
frequent  a  tenet  of  the  old  religions,  and  so  commonly  asso¬ 
ciated  with  a  love-feast  of  reconciliation  and  resurrection. 
It  may  be  fairly  interpreted  as  a  symbol  of  Nature-dismem¬ 
berment  in  Winter  and  resurrection  in  Spring  ;  but  we  must 
also  not  forget  that  it  may  (and  indeed  must)  have  stood 
as  an  allegory  of  tribal  dismemberment  and  reconciliation 
— the  tribe,  conceived  of  as  a  divinity,  having  thus  suffered 
and  died  through  the  inbreak  of  sin  and  the  self-motive, 
and  risen  again  into  wholeness  by  the  redemption  of  love 
and  sacrifice.  Whatever  view  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
tribe  may  have  taken  of  the  matter,  I  think  it  is  incon¬ 
testable  that  the  more  thoughtful  regarded  these  rites  as 
full  of  mystic  and  spiritual  meaning.  It  is  of  the  nature, 
as  I  have  said  before,  of  these  early  symbols  and  ceremonies 
that  they  held  so  many  meanings  in  solution  ;  and  it  is 
this  fact  which  gave  them  a  poetic  or  creative  quality, 
and  their  great  hold  upon  the  public  mind. 

I  use  the  word  **  tribe  ”  in  many  places  here  as  a  matter 
of  convenience ;  not  forgetting  however  that  in  some 


MYTH  OF  THE  GOLDEN  AGE 


153 


cases  “  clan  ”  might  be  more  appropriate,  as  referring  to 
a  section  of  a  tribe  ;  or  “  people  ”  or  “  folk  ”  as  referring 
to  unions  of  several  tribes.  It  is  impossible  of  course  to 
follow  out  all  the  gradations  of  organisation  from  tribal 
up  to  national  life  ;  but  it  may  be  remembered  that  while 
animal  totems  prevail  as  a  rule  in  the  earlier  stages,  human- 
formed  gods  become  more  conspicuous  in  the  later  develop¬ 
ments.  All  through,  the  practice  of  the  Eucharist  goes 
on,  in  varying  forms  adapting  itself  to  the  surrounding 
conditions ;  and  where  in  the  later  societies  a  religion 
like  Mithraism  or  Christianity  includes  people  of  very 
various  race,  the  Rite  loses  quite  naturally  its  tribal  signi¬ 
ficance  and  becomes  a  celebration  of  allegiance  to  a  particular 
god — of  unity  within  a  special  Church,  in  fact.  Ultimately 
it  may  become-  -as  for  a  brief  moment  in  the  history  of  the 
early  Christians  it  seemed  likely  to  do — a  celebration  of 
allegiance  to  all  Humanity,  irrespective  of  race  or  creed 
or  colour  of  skin  or  of  mind  ;  though  unfortunately  that 
day  seems  still  far  distant  and  remains  yet  unrealised. 
It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  the  religion  of 
the  Persian  Bab,  first  promulgated  in  1845  to  i850---and 
a  subject  I  shall  deal  with  presently— -had  as  a  matter  of 
fact  this  all  embracing  and  universal  scope. 

To  return  to  the  Golden  Age  or  Garden  of  Eden.  Our 
conclusion  seems  to  be  that  there  really  was  such  a  period 
of  comparative  harmony  in  human  life-- to  which  later 
generations  were  justified  in  looking  back,  and  looking 
back  with  regret.  It  corresponded  in  the  psychology  of 
human  Evolution  to  stage  One.  The  second  stage  was 
that  of  the  Fall  *  and  so  one  is  inevitably  led  to  the  con¬ 
jecture  and  the  hope  that  a  third  stage  will  redeem  the 
earth  and  its  inhabitants  to  a  condition  of  comparative 
blessedness. 


X 


THE  SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  THE  VIRGIN-MOTHER 

From  the  consideration  of  the  world-wide  belief  in  a  past 
Golden  Age,  and  the  world-wide  practice  of  the  Eucharist, 
in  the  sense  indicated  in  the  last  chapter,  to  that  of  the 
equally  widespread  belief  in  a  human-divine  Saviour,  is 
a  brief  and  easy  step.  Some  thirty  years  ago,  dealing 
with  this  subject,1  I  wrote  as  follows  : — “  The  true  Self 
of  man  consists  in  his  organic  relation  with  the  whole  body 
of  his  fellows  ;  and  when  the  man  abandons  his  true  Self 
he  abandons  also  his  true  relation  to  his  fellows.  The 
mass-Man  must  rule  in  each  unit-man,  else  the  unit-man 
will  drop  off  and  die.  But  when  the  outer  man  tries  to 
separate  himself  from  the  inner,  the  unit-man  from  the 
mass-Man,  then  the  reign  of  individuality  begins — a  false 
and  impossible  individuality  of  course,  but  the  only  means 
of  coming  to  the  consciousness  of  the  true  individuality.” 
And  further,  “  Thus  this  divinity  in  each  creature,  being 
that  which  constitutes  it  and  causes  it  to  cohere  together, 
was  conceived  of  as  that  creature's  saviour,  healer — healer 
of  wounds  of  body  and  wounds  of  heart — the  Man  within 
the  man,  whom  it  was  not  only  possible  to  know,  but  whom 
to  know  and  be  united  with  was  the  alone  salvation.  This, 
I  take  it,  was  the  law  of  health — and  of  holiness — as 

1  See  Civilisation  ;  its  Cause  and  Cuve ,  ch.  i. 

154 


SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  VIRGIN-MOTHER  155 


accepted  at  some  elder  time  of  human  history,  and  by 
us  seen  as  through  a  glass  darkly." 

I  think  it  is  impossible  not  to  see — however  much  in 
our  pride  of  Civilisation  (!)  we  like  to  jeer  at  the  pettinesses 
of  tribal  life — that  these  elder  people  perceived  as  a  matter 
of  fact  and  direct  consciousness  the  redeeming  presence 
(within  each  unit-member  of  the  group)  of  the  larger  life 
to  which  he  belonged.  This  larger  life  was  a  reality — 
"  a  Presence  to  be  felt  and  known  ”  ;  and  whether  he 
called  it  by  the  name  of  a  Totem-animal,  or  by  the  name 
of  a  Nature-divinity,  or  by  the  name  of  some  gracious 
human-limbed  God — some  Hercules,  Mithra,  Attis,  Orpheus, 
or  what-not — or  even  by  the  great  name  of  Humanity 
itself,  it  was  still  in  any  case  the  Saviour,  the  living 
incarnate  Being  by  the  realisation  of  whose  presence  the 
little  mortal  could  be  lifted  out  of  exile  and  error  and  death 
and  suffering  into  splendour  and  life  eternal. 

It  is  impossible,  I  think,  not  to  see  that  the  myriad  worship 
of  "  Saviours  ”  all  over  the  world,  from  China  to  Peru, 
can  only  be  ascribed  to  the  natural  working  of  some  such 
law  of  human  and  tribal  psychology — from  earliest  times 
and  in  all  races  the  same — springing  up  quite  spontaneously 
and  independently,  and  (so  far)  unaffected  by  the  mere 
contagion  of  local  tradition.  To  suppose  that  the  Devil, 
tong  before  the  advent  of  Christianity,  put  the  idea  into 
the  heads  of  all  these  earlier  folk,  is  really  to  pay  too  great 
a  compliment  both  to  the  power  and  the  ingenuity  of 
his  Satanic  Majesty— though  the  ingenuity  with  which 
the  early  Church  did  itself  suppress  all  information  about 
these  pre-Christian  Saviours  almost  rivals  that  wrhich  it 
credited  to  Satan  !  And  on  the  other  hand  to  suppose 
this  marvellous  and  universal  consent  of  belief  to  have 
sprung  by  mere  contagion  from  one  accidental  source 
would  seem  equally  far-fetched  and  unlikely. 

But  almost  more  remarkable  than  the  world-encircling 
belief  in  human-divine  Saviours  is  the  equally  widespread 


156  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


legend  of  their  birth  from  Virgin-mothers.  There  is  hardly 
a  god — as  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  see— whose 
worship  as  a  benefactor  of  mankind  attained  popularity 
in  any  of  the  four  continents,  Europe,  Asia,  Africa  and 
America— who  was  not  reported  to  have  been  bom  from 
a  Virgin,  or  at  least  from  a  mother  who  owed  the  Child 
not  to  any  earthly  father,  but  to  an  impregnation  from 
Heaven.  And  this  seems  at  first  sight  all  the  more 
astonishing  because  the  belief  in  the  possibility  of  such 
a  thing  is  so  entirely  out  of  the  line  of  our  modern  thought. 
So  that  while  it  would  seem  not  unnatural  that  such  a 
legend  should  have  sprung  up  spontaneously  in  some  odd 
benighted  corner  of  the  world,  we  find  it  very  difficult  to 
understand  how  in  that  case  it  should  have  spread  so 
rapidly  in  every  direction,  or — if  it  did  not  spread — how 
we  are  to  account  for  its  spontaneous  appearance  in  all 
these  widely  sundered  regions. 

I  think  here,  and  for  the  understanding  of  this  problem, 
we  are  thrown  back  upon  a  very  early  age  of  human 
evolution — the  age  of  Magic.  Before  any  settled  science 
or  philosophy  or  religion  existed,  there  were  still  certain 
Things — and  consequently  also  certain  Words— which  had 
a  tremendous  influence  on  the  human  mind,  which  in  fact 
affected  it  deeply.  Such  a  word,  for  instance,  is  ‘  Thunder  ’  ; 
to  hear  thunder,  to  imitate  it,  even  to  mention  it,  are  sure 
ways  of  rousing  superstitious  attention  and  imagination. 
Such  another  word  is  *  Serpent,’  another  ‘  Tree,’  and 
so  forth.  There  is  no  one  who  is  insensible  to  the  reverber¬ 
ation  of  these  and  other  such  words  and  images  1  ;  and 
among  them,  standing  prominently  out,  are  the  two 
‘  Mother  ’  and  ‘  Virgin.’  The  word  Mother  touches  the 
deepest  springs  of  human  feeling.  As  the  earliest  word 

1  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  how  out  of  the  discreet  use  of  such  words 
and  images,  combined  with  elementary  forms  like  the  square,  the 
triangle  and  the  circle,  and  elementary  numbers  like  3,  4,  5,  etc., 
quite  a  science,  so  to  speak,  of  Magic  arose. 


SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  VIRGIN-MOTHER  157 


learnt  and  clung  to  by  the  child,  it  twines  itself  with  the 
heart-strings  of  the  man  even  to  his  latest  day.  Nor 
must  we  forget  that  in  a  primitive  state  of  society  (the 
Matriarchate)  that  influence  was  probably  even  greater 
than  now  ;  for  the  father  of  the  child  being  (often  as  not) 
unknown  the  attachment  to  the  mother  was  all  the  more 
intense  and  undivided.  The  word  Mother  had  a  magic 
about  it  which  has  remained  even  until  to-day.  But  if 
that  word  rooted  itself  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  Child,  the 
other  word  ‘  virgin  1  had  an  obvious  magic  for  the  full 
grown  and  sexually  mature  Man — a  magic  which  it,  too, 
has  never  lost. 

There  is  ample  evidence  that  one  of  the  very  earliest 
objects  of  human  worship  was  the  Earth  itself,  conceived  of 
as  the  fertile  Mother  of  all  things.  Gaia  or  Ge  (the  earth) 
had  temples  and  altars  in  almost  all  the  cities  of  Greece. 
Rhea  or  Cybele,  sprung  from  the  Earth,  was  mother  of 
all  the  gods.”  Demeter  (“  earth  mother  ”)  was  honoured 
far  and  wide  as  the  gracious  patroness  of  the  crops  and 
vegetation.  Ceres,  of  course,  the  same.  Maia  in  the 
Indian  mythology  and  Isis  in  the  Egyptian  are  forms  of 
Nature  and  the  Earth-spirit,  represented  as  female  ;  and 
so  forth.  The  Earth,  in  these  ancient  cults,  was  the  mystic 
source  of  all  life,  and  to  it,  as  a  propitiation,  life  of  all  kinds 
was  sacrificed.  [There  are  strange  accounts  of  a  huge 
fire  being  made,  with  an  altar  to  Cybele  in  the  midst,  and 
of  deer  and  fawns  and  wild  animals,  and  birds  and  sheep 
and  com  and  fruits  being  thrown  pell-mell  into  the  flames.1] 
It  was,  in  a  way,  the  most  natural,  as  it  seems  to  have  been 
the  earliest  and  most  spontaneous  of  cults — the  worship 
of  the  Earth-mother,  the  all-producing  eternal  source  of 
life,  and  on  account  of  her  never-failing  ever-renewed 
fertility  conceived  of  as  an  immortal  Virgin. 

But  when  the  Saviour-legend  sprang  up — as  indeed  I 
think  it  must  have  sprung  up,  in  tribe  after  tribe  and 
1  See  Pausanias  iv.  32.  6  ;  and  Lucian,  De  Syria  Dea,  49. 


158  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


people  after  people,  independently— then,  whether  it 
sprang  from  the  divinisation  of  some  actual  man  who 
showed  the  way  of  light  and  deliverance  to  his  fellows 
“  sitting  in  darkness,”  or  whether  from  the  personification 
of  the  tribe  itself  as  a  god,  in  either  case  the  question  of 
the  hero's  parentage  was  bound  to  arise.  If  the  ‘  saviour  ' 
was  plainly  a  personification  of  the  tribe,  it  was  obviously 
impossible  to  suppose  him  the  son  of  a  mortal  mother. 
In  that  case — and  as  the  tribe  was  generally  traced  in 
the  legends  to  some  primeval  Animal  or  Mountain  or  thing 
of  Nature — it  was  probably  easy  to  think  of  him  (the 
saviour)  as  also  born  out  of  Nature’s  womb,  descended 
perhaps  from  that  pure  Virgin  of  the  World  who  is  the 
Earth  and  Nature,  who  rules  the  skies  at  night,  and  stands 
in  the  changing  phases  of  the  Moon,  and  is  worshiped 
(as  we  have,  seen)  in  the  great  constellation  Virgo.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  was  the  divinisation  of  some  actual 
man,  more  or  less  known  either  personally  or  by  tradition 
to  his  fellows,  then  in  all  probability  the  name  of  his  mortal 
mother  would  be  recognised  and  accepted  ;  but  as  to  his 
father,  that  side  of  parentage  being,  as  we  have  said, 
generally  very  uncertain,  it  would  be  easy  to  suppose  some 
heavenly  Annunciation,  the  midnight  visit  of  a  God,  and 
what  is  usually  termed  a  Virgin-birth. 

There  are  two  elements  to  be  remembered  here,  as 
conspiring  to  this  conclusion.  One  is  the  condition  of 
affairs  in  a  remote  matriarchal  period,  when  descent  was 
reckoned  always  through  the  maternal  line,  and  the 
fatherhood  in  each  generation  was  obscure  or  unknown 
or  commonly  left  out  of  account ;  and  the  other  is  the 
fact — so  strange  and  difficult  for  us  to  realise — that  among 
some  very  primitive  peoples,  like  the  Australian  aborigines, 
the  necessity  for  a  woman  to  have  intercourse  with  a  male, 
in  order  to  bring  about  conception  and  child-birth,  was 
actually  not  recognised.  Scientific  observation  had  not 
always  got  as  far  as  that,  and  the  matter  was  still  under 


SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  VIRGIN-MOTHER  159 


the  domain  of  Magic  !  1 *  A  Virgin-Mother  was  therefore 
a  quite  imaginable  (not  to  say  *  conceivable  ’)  thing ;  and 
indeed  a  very  beautiful  and  fascinating  thing,  combining 
in  one  image  the  potent  magic  of  two  very  wonderful 
words.  It  does  not  seem  impossible  that  considerations 
of  this  kind  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  doctrine  or  legend 
of  the  virgin-mother  and  the  heavenly  father  among  so 
many  races  and  in  so  many  localities — even  without  any 
contagion  of  tradition  among  them. 

Anyhow,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  world-wide  dis¬ 
semination  of  the  legend  is  most  remarkable.  Zeus,  Father 
of  the  gods,  visited  Semele,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  the 
form  of  a  thunderstorm  ;  and  she  gave  birth  to  the  great 
saviour  and  deliverer  Dionysus.  Zeus,  again,  impreg¬ 
nated  Danae  in  a  shower  of  gold  ;  and  the  child  was  Perseus, 
who  slew  the  Gorgons  (the  powers  of  darkness)  and  saved 
Andromeda  (the  human  soul 3).  Devaki,  the  radiant 
Virgin  of  the  Hindu  mythology,  became  the  wife  of  the 
god  Vishnu  and  bore  Krishna,  the  beloved  hero  and  proto¬ 
type  of  Christ.  With  regard  to  Buddha  St.  Jerome  says  3 
“It  is  handed  down  among  the  Gymnosophists  of  India 
that  Buddha,  the  founder  of  their  system,  was  brought 
forth  by  a  Virgin  from  her  side.”  The  Egyptian  Isis, 
with  the  child  Horus  on  her  knee,  was  honoured  centuries 
before  the  Christian  era,  and  worshiped  under  the  names 
of  “  Our  Lady,”  “Queen  of  Heaven,”  “Star  of  the  Sea.” 
“  Mother  of  God,”  and  so  forth.  Before  her,  Neith,  the 

1  Probably  the  long  period  (nine  months)  elapsing  between  co¬ 
habitation  and  childbirth  confused  early  speculation  on  the  subject. 
Then  clearly  cohabitation  was  not  always  followed  by  childbirth. 

And,  more  important  still,  the  number  of  virgins  of  a  mature  age  in 
primitive  societies  was  so  very  minute  that  the  fact  of  their  child¬ 
lessness  attracted  no  attention — whereas  in  our  societies  the  sterility 
of  the  whole  class  is  patent  to  everyone. 

3  For  this  interpretation  of  the  word  Andromeda  see  The  Perfect 
Way  by  Edward  Maitland,  preface  to  First  Edition,  1881. 

3  Contra  Jovian,  Book  I  ;  and  quoted  by  Rhys  Davids  in  his 
Buddhism,  p.  183. 


100  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Virgin  of  the  World,  whose  figure  bends  from  the  sky  over 
the  earthly  plains  and  the  children  of  men,  was  acclaimed 
as  mother  of  the  great  god  Osiris.  The  saviour  Mithra, 
too,  was  born  of  a  Virgin,  as  we  have  had  occasion  to 
notice  before  ;  and  on  the  Mithraic  monuments  the 
mother  suckling  her  child  is  a  not  uncommon  figure.1 

The  old  Teutonic  goddess  Hertha  (the  Earth)  was  a 
Virgin,  but  was  impregnated  by  the  heavenly  Spirit  (the 
Sky)  ;  and  her  image  with  a  child  in  her  arms  was  to  be 
seen  in  the  sacred  groves  of  Germany.2 3 4 5  The  Scandinavian 
Frigga,  in  much  the  same  way,  being  caught  in  the  embraces 
of  Odin,  the  All-father,  conceived  and  bore  a  son,  the 
blessed  Balder,  healer  and  saviour  of  mankind.  Quetzaicoatl, 
the  (crucified)^  saviour  of  the^Aztecs,  was  the  son  of  Chi- 
malman,  the  Virgin  Queen  of  Heaven. 3  Even  the  Chinese 
had  a  mother-goddess  and  virgin  with  child  in  her  arms  4  : 
and  the  ancient  Etruscans  the  same. 5 

Finally,  we  have  the  curiously  large  number  of  black 
virgin  mothers  who  are  or  have  been  worshiped.  Not 
only  cases  like  Devaki  the  Indian  goddess,  or  Isis  the 
Egyptian,  who  would  naturally  appear  black-skinned  or 
dark ;  but  the  large  number  of  images  and  paintings 
of  the  same  kind,  yet  extant — especially  in  the  Italian 
churches — and  passing  for  representations  of  Mary  and 

1  See  Doane’s  Bible  Myths,  p.  332,  and  Dupuis’  Origins  of  Religious 
Beliefs. 

2  R.  P.  Knight’s  Ancient  Art  and  Mythology,  p.  21. 

3  See  Kingsborough’s  Mexican  Antiquities,  vol.  vi,  p.  176,  where 
it  is  said  “  an  ambassador  was  sent  from  heaven  on  an  embassy  to 
a  Virgin  of  Tulan,  called  Chimalman  .  .  .  announcing  that  it  was 
the  will  of  the  God  that  she  should  conceive  a  son  ;  and  having 
delivered  her  the  message  he  rose  and  left  the  house  ;  and  as  soon 
as  he  had  left  it  she  conceived  a  son,  without  connexion  with  man, 
who  was  called  Quetzalcoatle,  who  they  say  is  the  god  of  air.” 
Further,  it  is  explained  that  Quetzaicoatl  sacrificed  himself,  drawing 
forth  his  own  blood  with  thorns  ;  and  that  the  word  Quetzalcoatlo- 
topitzin  means  ”  our  well-beloved  son.” 

4  Doane,  p.  327. 

5  See  Inman’s  Pagan  and  Christian  Symbolism,  p.  27. 


SAVIOUR-GOD  AND  VIRGIN-MOTHER  161 


the  infant  Jesus.  Such  are  the  well-known  image  in  the 
chapel  at  Loretto,  and  images  and  paintings  besides  in 
the  churches  at  Genoa,  Pisa,  Padua,  Munich  and  other 
places.  It  is  difficult  not  to  regard  these  as  very  old  Pagan 
or  pre-Christian  relics  which  lingered  on  into  Christian 
times  and  were  baptised  anew — as  indeed  we  know  many 
relics  and  images  actually  were — into  the  service  of  the 
Church.  “  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  ”  ;  and  there 
is  I  believe  more  than  one  black  figure  extant  of  this 
Diana,  who,  though  of  course  a  virgin,  is  represented  with 
innumerable  breasts 1 — not  unlike  some  of  the  archaic 
statues  of  Artemis  and  Isis.  At  Paris,  far  on  into  Christian 
times  there  was,  it  is  said,  on  the  site  of  the  present 
Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame,  a  Temple  dedicated  to  ‘  our 
Lady’  Isis;  and  images  belonging  to  the  earlier  shrine 
would  in  all  probability  be  preserved  with  altered  name 
in  the  latex. 

All  this  illustrates  not  only  the  wide  diffusion  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Virgin-mother,  but  its  extreme  antiquity. 
The  subject  is  obscure,  and  worthy  of  more  consideration 
than  has  yet  been  accorded  to  it ;  and  I  do  not  feel  able 
to  add  anything  to  the  tentative  explanations  given  a 
page  or  two  back,  except  perhaps  to  suppose  that  the 
vision  of  the  Perfect  Man  hovered  dimly  over  the  mind 
of  the  human  race  on  its  first  emergence  from  the  purely 
animal  stage  ;  and  that  a  quite  natural  speculation  with 
regard  to  such  a  being  was  that  he  would  be  born  from 
a  Perfect  Woman — who  according  to  early  ideas  would 
necessarily  be  the  Virgin  Earth  itself,  mother  of  all  things. 
Anyhow  it  was  a  wonderful  Intuition,  slumbering  as  it 
would  seem  in  the  breast  of  early  man,  that  the  Great 
Earth  after  giving  birth  to  all  living  creatures  would  at 
last  bring  forth  a  Child  who  should  become  the  Saviour 
of  the  human  race. 

There  is  of  course  the  further  theory,  entertained  by 

1  See  illustration,  p.  30,  in  Inman’s  Pagan  and  Christian  Symbolism. 

11 


162  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


some,  that  virgin-parturition — a  kind  of  Parthenogenesis — 
has  as  a  matter  of  fact  occasionally  occurred  among  mortal 
women,  and  even  still  does  occur.  I  should  be  the  last 
to  deny  the  possibility  of  this  (or  of  anything  else  in  Nature), 
but,  seeing  the  immense  difficulties  in  the  way  of  proof 
of  any  such  asserted  case,  and  the  absence  so  far  of  any 
thoroughly  attested  and  verified  instance,  it  would,  I 
think,  be  advisable  to  leave  this  theory  out  of  account 
at  present. 

But  whether  any  of  the  explanations  spoken  of  are  right 
or  wrong,  and  whatever  explanation  we  adopt,  there 
remains  the  fact  of  the  universality  over  the  world  of  this 
legend — affording  another  instance  of  the  practical  solid¬ 
arity  and  continuity  of  the  Pagan  Creeds  with  Christianity. 


XI 

RITUAL  DANCING 

It  is  unnecessary  to  labour  the  conclusion  of  the  last  two 
or  three  chapters,  namely  that  Christianity  grew  out  of 
the  former  Pagan  Creeds  and  is  in  its  general  outlook  and 
origins  continuous  and  of  one  piece  with  them.  I  have 
not  attempted  to  bring  together  all  the  evidence  in  favour 
of  this  contention,  as  such  a  work  would  be  too  vast,  but 
more  illustrations  of  its  truth  will  doubtless  occur  to  readers, 
or  will  emerge  as  we  proceed. 

I  think  we  may  take  it  as  proved  (i)  that  from  the 
earliest  ages,  and  before  History,  a  great  body  of  religious 
belief  and  ritual — first  appearing  among  very  primitive 
and  unformed  folk,  whom  we  should  call  ‘  savages  ’ — has 
come  slowly  down,  broadening  and  differentiating  itself 
on  the  way  into  a  great  variety  of  forms,  but  embodying 
always  certain  main  ideas  which  became  in  time  the 
accepted  doctrines  of  the  later  Churches — the  Indian, 
the  Egyptian,  the  Mithraic,  the  Christian,  and  so  forth. 
What  these  ideas  in  their  general  outline  have  been  we 
can  perhaps  best  judge  from  our  “  Apostles’  Creed,”  as 
it  is  recited  every  Sunday  in  our  churches. 

“  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven 
and  earth  :  And  in  Jesus  Christ  his  only  Son  our  Lord, 
who  was  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  born  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  suffered  under  Pontius  Pilate,  was  crucified,  dead 

163 


164  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  buried.  He  descended  into  Hell ;  the  third  day  he 
rose  again  from  the  dead,  He  ascended  into  heaven,  and 
sitteth  on  the  right  hand  of  God  the  Father  Almighty  ; 
from  thence  he  shall  come  to  judge  the  quick  and  the  dead. 
I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost ;  the  holy  Catholic  Church  ; 
the  communion  of  Saints  ;  the  Forgiveness  of  sins  ;  the 
Resurrection  of  the  body,  and  the  life  everlasting. 
Amen.” 

Here  we  have  the  All-Father  and  Creator,  descending 
from  the  Sky  in  the  form  of  a  spirit  to  impregnate  the 
earthly  Virgin-mother,  who  thus  gives  birth  to  a  Saviour- 
hero.  The  latter  is  slain  by  the  powers  of  Evil,  is  buried 
and  descends  into  the  lower  world,  but  rises  again  as 
God  into  heaven  and  becomes  the  leader  and  judge  of 
mankind.  We  have  the  confirmation  of  the  Church  (or, 
in  earlier  times,  of  the  Tribe)  by  means  of  a  Eucharist 
or  Communion  which  binds  together  all  the  members, 
living  or  dead,  and  restores  errant  individuals  through 
the  Sacrifice  of  the  hero  and  the  Forgiveness  of  their  sins  ; 
and  we  have  the  belief  in  a  bodily  Resurrection  and  con¬ 
tinued  life  of  the  members  within  the  fold  of  the  Church 
(or  Tribe),  itself  regarded  as  eternal. 

One  has  only,  instead  of  the  word  ‘  Jesus/  to  read 
Dionysus  or  Krishna  or  Hercules  or  Osiris  or  Attis,  and 
instead  of  ‘  Mary  '  to  insert  Semele  or  Devaki  or  Alcmene 
or  Neith  or  Nana,  and  for  Pontius  Pilate  to  use  the  name 
of  any  terrestrial  tyrant  who  comes  into  the  corresponding 
story,  and  lo  !  the  creed  fits  in  all  particulars  into  the 
rites  and  worship  of  a  pagan  god.  I  need  not  enlarge 
upon  a  thesis  which  is  self-evident  from  all  that  has  gone 
before.  I  do  not  say,  of  course,  that  all  the  religious  beliefs 
of  Paganism  are  included  and  summarised  in  our  Apostles’ 
Creed,  for — as  I  shall  have  occasion  to  note  in  the  next 
chapter — I  think  some  very  important  religious  elements 
are  there  omitted ;  but  I  do  think  that  all  the  beliefs  which 
are  summarised  in  the  said  creed  had  already  been  fully 


RITUAL  DANCING 


165 


represented  and  elaborately  expressed  in  the  non-Christian 
religions  and  rituals  of  Paganism. 

Further  (2)  I  think  we  may  safely  say  that  there  is  no 
certain  proof  that  the  body  of  beliefs  just  mentioned  sprang 
from  any  one  particular  centre  far  back  and  radiated  thence 
by  dissemination  and  mental  contagion  over  the  rest  of 
the  world ;  but  the  evidence  rather  shows  that  these 
beliefs  were,  for  the  most  part,  the  spontaneous  outgrowths 
(in  various  localities)  of  the  human  mind  at  certain  stages 
of  its  evolution  ;  that  they  appeared,  in  the  different  races 
and  peoples,  at  different  periods  according  to  the  degree 
of  evolution,  and  were  largely  independent  of  intercourse 
and  contagion,  though  of  course,  in  cases,  considerably 
influenced  by  it ;  and  that  one  great  and  all-important 
occasion  and  provocative  of  these  beliefs  was  actually 
the  rise  of  self-consciousness — that  is,  the  coming  of  the 
mind  to  a  more  or  less  distinct  awareness  of  itself  and  of 
its  own  operation,  and  the  consequent  development  and 
growth  of  Individualism,  and  of  the  Self-centred  attitude 
in  human  thought  and  action. 

In  the  third  place  (3)  I  think  we  may  see — and  this  is 
the  special  subject  of  the  present  chapter — that  at  a  very 
early  period,  when  humanity  was  hardly  capable  of 
systematic  expression  in  what  we  call  Philosophy  or  Science, 
it  could  not  well  rise  to  an  ordered  and  literary  expression 
of  its  beliefs,  such  as  we  find  in  the  later  religions  and 
the  ‘  Churches  *  (Babylonian,  Jewish,  East  Indian,  Christian, 
or  what-not),  and  yet  that  it  felt  these  beliefs  very  intensely 
and  was  urged,  almost  compelled,  to  their  utterance  in 
some  form  or  other.  And  so  it  came  about  that  people 
expressed  themselves  in  *a  vast  mass  of  ritual  and  myth 
— customs,  ceremonies,  legends,  stories — which  on  account 
of  their  popular  and  concrete  form  were  handed  down 
for  generations,  and  some  of  which  linger  on  still  in  the 
midst  of  our  modern  civilisation.  These  rituals  and  legends 
were,  many  of  them,  absurd  enough,  rambling  and  childish 


166  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


in  character,  and  preposterous  in  conception,  yet  they 
gave  the  expression  needed  ;  and  some  of  them  of  course, 
as  we  have  seen,  were  full  of  meaning  and  suggestion. 

A  critical  and  commercial  Civilisation,  such  as  ours, 
in  which  (notwithstanding  much  talk  about  Art)  the 
artistic  sense  is  greatly  lacking,  or  at  any  rate  but  little 
diffused,  does  not  as  a  rule  understand  that  poetic  rites , 
in  the  evolution  of  peoples,  came  naturally  before  anything 
like  ordered  poems  or  philosophy  or  systematised  views 
about  life  and  religion — such  as  we  love  to  wallow  in  ! 
Things  were  felt  before  they  were  spoken.  The  loading 
of  diseases  into  disease-boats,  of  sins  onto  scapegoats, 
the  propitiation  of  the  forces  of  nature  by  victims,  human 
or  animal,  sacrifices,  ceremonies  of  re-birth,  eucharistic 
feasts,  sexual  communions,  orgiastic  celebrations  of  the 
common  life,  and  a  host  of  other  things — all  said  plainly 
enough  what  was  meant,  but  not  in  words.  Partly  no 
doubt  it  was  that  at  some  early  time  words  were  more 
difficult  of  command  and  less  flexible  in  use  than  actions 
(and  at  all  times  are  they  not  less  expressive  ?).  Partly 
it  was  that  mankind  was  in  the  child-stage.  The  Child 
delights  in  ritual,  in  symbol,  in  expression  through  material 
objects  and  actions  : 

See,  at  his  feet  some  little  plan  or  chart, 

Some  fragment  from  his  dream  of  human  life. 

Shaped  by  himself  with  newly-learned  art ; 

A  wedding  or  a  festival, 

A  mourning  or  a  funeral  ; 

And  this  hath  now  his  heart. 

And  primitive  man  in  the  child-stage  felt  a  positive  joy 
in  ritual  celebrations,  and  indulged  in  expressions  which 
we  but  little  understand  ;  for  these  had  then  his  heart. 

One  of  the  most  pregnant  of  these  expressions  was 
Dancing.  Children  dance  instinctively.  They  dance  with 
rage ;  they  dance  with  joy,  with  sheer  vitality ;  they 


RITUAL  DANCING 


167 


dance  with  pain,  or  sometimes  with  savage  glee  at  the 
suffering  of  others ;  they  delight  in  mimic  combats,  or 
in  animal  plays  and  disguises.  There  are  such  things  as 
Courting-dances,  when  the  mature  male  and  female  go 
through  a  ritual  together— not  only  in  civilised  ball-rooms 
and  the  back-parlours  of  inns,  but  in  the  farmyards  where 
the  rooster  pays  his  addresses  to  the  hen,  or  the  yearling 
bull  to  the  cow — with  quite  recognised  formalities  ;  there 
are  elaborate  ceremonials  performed  by  the  Australian 
bower-birds  and  many  other  animals.  All  these  things— 
at  any  rate  in  children  and  animals — come  before  speech  ; 
and  anyhow  we  may  say  that  love-rites,  even  in  mature 
and  civilised  man,  hardly  admit  of  speech.  Words  onty 
vulgarise  love  and  blunt  its  edge. 

So  Dance  to  the  savage  and  the  early  man  was  not 
merely  an  amusement  or  a  gymnastic  exercise  (as  the 
books  often  try  to  make  out),  but  it  was  also  a  serious 
and  intimate  part  of  life,  an  expression  of  religion  and 
the  relation  of  man  to  non-human  Powers.  Imagine  a 
young  dancer — and  the  admitted  age  for  ritual  dancing 
was  commonly  from  about  eighteen  to  thirty — -coming 
forward  on  the  dancing-ground  or  platform  for  the 
invocation  of  Rain.  We  have  unfortunately  no  kinematic 
records,  but  it  is  not  impossible  or  very  difficult  to  imagine 
the  various  gestures  and  movements  which  might  be  con¬ 
sidered  appropriate  to  such  a  rite  in  different  localities 
or  among  different  peoples.  A  modern  student  of  Dalcroze 
Eurhythmies  would  find  the  problem  easy.  After  a  time 
a  certain  ritual  dance  (for  rain)  would  become  stereotyped 
and  generally  adopted.  Or  imagine  a  young  Greek  leading 
an  invocation  to  Apollo  to  stay  some  plague  which  was 
ravaging  the  country.  He  might  well  be  accompanied 
by  a  small  body  of  co-dancers  ;  but  he  would  be  the  leader 
and  chief  representative.  Or  it  might  be  a  war-dance — 
as  a  more  or  less  magical  preparation  for  the  raid  or  foray. 
We  are  familiar  enough  with  accounts  of  war-dances  among 


168  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


American  Indians.  C.  O.  Muller  in  his  History  and  Anti¬ 
quities  of  the  Doric  Race  1  gives  the  following  account  of 
the  Pyrrhic  dance  among  the  Greeks,  which  was  danced 
in  full  armour : — “  Plato  says  that  it  imitated  all  the 
attitudes  of  defence,  by  avoiding  a  thrust  or  a  cast,  retreat¬ 
ing,  springing  up,  and  crouching — as  also  the  opposite 
movements  of  attack  with  arrows  and  lances,  and  also 
of  every  kind  of  thrust.  So  strong  was  the  attachment 
to  this  dance  at  Sparta  that,  long  after  it  had  in  the  other 
Greek  states  degenerated  into  a  Bacchanalian  revel,  it 
was  still  danced  by  the  Spartans  as  a  warlike  exercise, 
and  boys  of  fifteen  were  instructed  in  it.”  Of  the  Hunting- 
dance  I  have  already  given  instances.1 2  It  always  had 
the  character  of  Magic  about  it,  by  which  the  game  or 
quarry  might  presumably  be  influenced  ;  and  it  can  easily 
be  understood  that  if  the  Hunt  was  not  successful  the 
blame  might  well  be  attributed  to  some  neglect  of  the 
usual  ritual  mimes  or  movements — no  laughing  matter 
for  the  leader  of  the  dance. 

Or  there  were  dances  belonging  to  the  ceremonies  of 
Initiation — dances  both  by  the  initiators  and  the  initiated. 
Jane  E.  Harrison  in  Themis  (p.  24)  says,  “  Instruction 
among  savage  peoples  is  always  imparted  in  more  or  less 
mimetic  dances.  At  initiation  you  learn  certain  dances 
which  confer  on  you  definite  social  status.  When  a  man 
is  too  old  to  dance,  he  hands  over  his  dance  to  another 
and  a  younger,  and  he  then  among  some  tribes  ceases 
to  exist  socially.  .  .  .  The  dances  taught  to  boys  at 
initiation  are  frequently  if  not  alwa}/s  armed  dances.  These 
are  not  necessarily  warlike.  The  accoutrement  of  spear 
and  shield  was  in  part  decorative,  in  part  a  provision  for 
making  the  necessary  hubbub.”  (Here  Miss  Harrison 

1  Book  IV,  ch.  6,  §  7. 

2  See  also  Winwood  Reade’s  Savage  Ajrica,  ch.  xviii,  in  which  he 
speaks  of  the  ‘  gorilla  dance/  before  hunting  gorillas,  as  a  “  religious 
festival.” 


RITUAL  DANCING 


169 


reproduces  a  photograph  of  an  Initiation  dance  among 
the  Akikuyu  of  British  East  Africa.)  The  Initiation- 
dances  blend  insensibly  and  naturally  with  the  Mystery 
and  Religion  dances ,  for  indeed  initiation  was  for  the  most 
part  an  instruction  in  the  mysteries  and  social  rites  of 
the  Tribe.  They  were  the  expression  of  things  which 
would  be  hard  even  for  us,  and  which  for  rude  folk  would 
be  impossible,  to  put  into  definite  words.  Hence  arose 
the  expression — whose  meaning  has  been  much  discussed 
by  the  learned — “  to  dance  out  a  ntystery.”  1 

Lucian,  in  a  much-quoted  passage,2 3  observes:  “You  cannot 
find  a  single  ancient  mystery  in  which  there  is  not  dancing 
.  .  .  and  this  much  all  men  know,  that  most  people  say 
of  the  revealers  of  the  mysteries  that  they  *  dance  them 
out/  ”  Andrew  Lang,  commenting  on  this  passaged 
continues  :  “  Clemens  of  Alexandria  uses  the  same  term 
when  speaking  of  his  own  *  appalling  revelations/  So 
closely  connected  are  mysteries  with  dancing  among  savages 
that  when  Mr.  Orpen  asked  Qing,  the  Bushman  hunter, 
about  some  doctrines  in  which  Qing  was  not  initiated,  he  said: 

‘  Only  the  initiated  men  of  that  dance  know  these  things/ 
To  *  dance  '  this  or  that  means  to  be  acquainted  with  this 
or  that  myth,  which  is  represented  in  a  dance  or  ballet 
d’ action.  So  widely  distributed  is  the  practice  that  Acosta 
in  an  interesting  passage  mentions  it  as  familiar  to  the 
people  of  Peru  before  and  after  the  Spanish  conquest.” 
[And  we  may  say  that  when  the  ‘  mysteries  '  are  of  a  srexual 
nature  it  can  easily  be  understood  that  to  ‘  dance  them 
out  *  is  the  only  way  of  explaining  them  !] 

Thus  we  begin  to  appreciate  the  serious  nature  and  the 
importance  of  the  dance  among  primitive  folk.  To  dub 
a  youth  “  a  good  dancer  ”  is  to  pay  him  a  great  compliment. 

1  Meaning  apparently  either  simply  to  represent,  or,  sometimes 
to  divulge,  a  mystery. 

2  t repi  ’OpxiioeujQ,  ch.  xv.  277. 

3  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  i,  272. 


170  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Among  the  well-known  inscriptions  on  the  rocks  in  the 
island  of  Thera  in  the  iEgean  sea  there  are  many  which 
record  in  deeply  graven  letters  the  friendship  and  devotion 
to  each  other  of  Spartan  warrior-comrades  ;  it  seems 
strange  at  first  to  find  how  often  such  an  epithet  of  praise 
occurs  as  Bathycles  dances  well,  Eumelos  is  a  perfect  dancer 
(apiGTOQ  opytaTciQ).  One  hardly  in  general  expects  one 
warrior  to  praise  another  for  his  dancing !  But  when 
one  realises  what  is  really  meant — namely  the  fitness  of 
the  loved  comrade  to  lead  in  religious  and  magical  rituals 
• — then  indeed  the  compliment  takes  on  a  new  complexion. 
Religious  dances,  in  dedication  to  a  god,  have  of  course 
been  honoured  in  every  country.  Muller,  in  the  work  just 
cited,1  describes  a  lively  dance  called  the  hyporchema 
which,  accompanied  by  songs,  was  used  in  the  worship 
of  Apollo.  “  In  this,  besides  the  chorus  of  singers  who 
usually  danced  around  the  blazing  altar,  several  persons 
were  appointed  to  accompany  the  action  of  the  poem 
with  an  appropriate  pantomimic  display.”  It  was  pro¬ 
bably  some  similar  dance  which  is  recorded  in  Exodus, 
ch.  xxxii,  when  Aaron  made  the  Israelites  a  golden  Calf 
(image  of  the  Egyptian  Apis).  There  was  an  altar  and  a 
fire  and  burnt  offerings  for  sacrifice,  and  the  people  dancing 
around.  Whether  in  the  Apollo  ritual  the  dancers  were 
naked  I  cannot  say,  but  in  the  affair  of  the  golden  Calf 
they  evidently  were,  for  it  will  be  remembered  that  it 
was  just  this  which  upset  Moses’  equanimity  so  badly — 
“  when  he  saw  that  the  people  were  naked  ’* — and  led  to 
the  breaking  of  the  two  tables  of  stone  and  the  slaughter 
of  some  thousands  of  folk.  It  will  be  remembered  also 
that  David  on  a  sacrificial  occasion  danced  naked  before 
the  Lord.3 

It  may  seem  strange  that  dances  in  honour  of  a  god  should 
be  held  naked ;  but  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  this 

1  Book  II,  ch.  viii,  §  14. 

2  2  Sam.  vi. 


RITUAL  DANCING 


171 


was  frequently  the  case,  and  it  leads  to  an  interesting 
speculation.  Many  of  these  rituals  undoubtedly  owed 
their  sanctity  and  solemnity  to  their  extreme  antiquity. 
They  came  down  in  fact  from  very  far  back  times  when 
the  average  man  or  woman — as  in  some  of  the  Central 
African  tribes  to-day — wore  simply  nothing  at  all ;  and 
like  all  religious  ceremonies  they  tended  to  preserve  their 
forms  long  after  surrounding  customs  and  conditions  had 
altered.  Consequently  nakedness  lingered  on  in  sacri¬ 
ficial  and  other  rites  into  periods  when  in  ordinary  life  it 
had  come  to  be  abandoned  or  thought  indecent  and  shame¬ 
ful.  This  comes  out  very  clearly  in  both  instances  above- 
quoted  from  the  Bible.  For  in  Exodus  xxxii.  25  it  is  said 
that  “  xAaron  had  made  them  (the  dancers)  naked  unto 
their  shame  among  their  enemies  ( read  opponents),”  and 
in  2  Sam.  vi.  20  we  are  told  that  Michal  came  out  and 
sarcastically  rebuked  the  “  glorious  king  of  Israel  ”  for 
“  shamelessly  uncovering  himself,  like  a  vain  fellow  ” 
(for  which  rebuke,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  David  took  a  mean 
revenge  on  Michal).  In  both  cases  evidently  custom  had 
so  far  changed  that  to  a  considerable  section  of  the  popu¬ 
lation  these  naked  exhibitions  had  become  indecent,  though 
as  parts  of  an  acknowledged  ritual  they  were  still  retained 
and  supported  by  others.  The  same  conclusion  may  be 
derived  from  the  commands  recorded  in  Exodus  xx.  26 
and  xxviii.  42,  that  the  priests  be  not  “  uncovered  ”  before 
the  altar — commands  which  would  hardly  have  been  needed 
had  not  the  practice  been  in  vogue. 

Then  there  were  dances  (partly  magical  or  religious) 
performed  at  rustic  and  agricultural  festivals,  like  the 
Epilenios,  celebrated  in  Greece  at  the  gathering  of  the  grapes.1 
Of  such  a  dance  we  get  a  glimpse  in  the  Bible  (Judges  xxi. 
20)  when  the  elders  advised  the  children  of  Benjamin  to 
go  out  and  lie  in  wait  in  the  vineyards,  at  the  time  of  the 
yearly  feast ;  and  “  when  the  daughters  of  Shiloh  come  out 

1  E7n\tiriot  vjivoi:  hymns  sung  over  the  winepress  (Dictionary). 


172  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


to  dance  in  the  dances,  then  come  ye  out  of  the  vineyards 
and  catch  you  every  man  a  wife  from  the  daughters  of 
Shiloh  ” — a  touching  example  apparently  of  early  so-called 
*  marriage  by  capture  *  !  Or  there  were  dances,  also  partly 
or  originally  religious,  of  a  quite  orgiastic  and  Bacchan¬ 
alian  character,  like  the  Bryallicha  performed  in  Sparta 
by  men  and  women  in  hideous  masks,  or  the  Deimalea  by 
Sileni  and  Satyrs  waltzing  in  a  circle ;  or  the  Bibasis 
carried  out  by  both  men  and  women — a  quite  gymnastic 
exercise  in  which  the  performers  took  a  special  pride  in 
striking  their  own  buttocks  with  their  heels !  or  others 
wilder  still,  which  it  would  perhaps  not  be  convenient  to 
describe. 

- 

We  must  see  how  important  a  part  Dancing  played  in 
that  great  panorama  of  Ritual  and  Religion  (spoken  of  in 
the  last  chapter)  which,  having  originally  been  led  up  to 
by  the  ‘Fall  of  Man/  has  ever  since  the  dawn  of  history 
gradually  overspread  the  world  with  its  strange  procession 
of  demons  and  deities,  and  its  symbolic  representations 
of  human  destiny.  When  it  is  remembered  that  ritual 
dancing  was  the  matrix  out  of  which  the  Drama  sprang, 
and  further  that  the  drama  in  its  inception  (as  still  to-day 
in  India)  was  an  affair  of  religion  and  was  acted  in,  or  in 
connexion  with,  the  Temples,  it  becomes  easier  to  under¬ 
stand  how  all  this  mass  of  ceremonial  sacrifices,  expiations, 
initiations,  Sun  and  Nature  festivals,  eucharistic  and  orgiastic 
communions  and  celebrations,  mystery-plays,  dramatic 
representations,  myths  and  legends,  etc.,  which  I  have 
touched  upon  in  the  preceding  chapters — together  with 
all  the  emotions,  the  desires,  the  fears,  the  yearnings  and 
the  wonderment  which  they  represented — have  practically 
sprung  from  the  same  root  :  a  root  deep  and  necessary 
in  the  psychology  of  Man.  Presently  I  hope  to  show  that 
they  will  all  practically  converge  again  in  the  end  to  one 
meaning,  and  prepare  the  way  for  one  great  Synthesis  to 


RITUAL  DANCING 


173 


come — an  evolution  also  necessary  and  inevitable  in  human 
psychology. 

In  that  truly  inspired  Ode  from  which  I  quoted  a  few 
pages  back,  occur  those  well-known  words  whose  repetition 
now  will,  on  account  of  their  beauty,  I  am  sure  be  excused  : — 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  : 

The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life’s  Star, 

Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting. 

And  cometh  from,  afar  ; 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness. 

But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home  : 

Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy  ! 

Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 
Upon  the  growing  Boy, 

But  He  beholds  the  light  and  whence  it  flows, 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy  ; 

The  Youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  east 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature’s  Priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 
Is  on  his  way  attended  ; 

At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away. 

And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

Wordsworth — though  he  had  not  the  inestimable  ad¬ 
vantage  of  a  nineteenth-century  education  and  the  inheri¬ 
tance  of  the  Darwinian  philosophy — does  nevertheless  put 
the  matter  of  the  Genius  of  the  Child  in  a  way  which  (with 
the  alteration  of  a  few  conventional  terms)  we  scientific 
moderns  are  quite  inclined  to  accept.  We  all  admit  now 
that  the  Child  does  not  come  into  the  world  with  a  mental 
tabula  rasa  of  entire  forgetfulness  but  on  the  contrary  as 
the  possessor  of  vast  stores  of  sub-conscious  memory,  derived 
from  its  ancestral  inheritances  ;  we  ail  admit  that  a  certain 
grace  and  intuitive  insight  and  even  prophetic  quality,  in 
the  child-nature,  are  due  to  the  harmonisation  of  these 
racial  inheritances  in  the  infant,  even  before  it  is  born  ; 


174  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  that  after  birth  the  impact  of  the  outer  world  serves 
rather  to  break  up  and  disintegrate  this  harmony  than 
to  confirm  and  strengthen  it.  Some  psychologists  indeed 
nowadays  go  so  far  as  to  maintain  that  the  child  is  not 
only  *  Father  of  the  man/  but  superior  to  the  man,1  and 
that  Boyhood  and  Youth  and  Maturity  are  attained  to 
not  by  any  addition  but  by  a  process  of  loss  and  subtraction. 
It  will  be  seen  that  the  last  ten  lines  of  the  above  quotation 
rather  favour  this  view. 

But  my  object  in  making  the  quotation  was  not  to  insist 
on  the  truth  of  its  application  to  the  individual  Child,  but 
rather  to  point  out  the  remarkable  way  in  which  it  illustrates 
what  I  have  said  about  the  Childhood  of  the  Race.  In  fact, 
if  the  quotation  be  read  over  again  with  this  interpretation 
(which  I  do  not  say  Wordsworth  intended)  that  the  ‘  birth  ’ 
spoken  of  is  the  birth  or  evolution  of  the  distinctively  self- 
conscious  Man  from  the  Animals  and  the  animal-natured, 
unself-conscious  human  beings  of  a  preceding  age,  then 
the  parable  unfolds  itself  perfectly  naturally  and  con¬ 
vincingly.  That  birth  certainly  was  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  ; 
the  grace  and  intuition  and  instinctive  perfection  of  the 
animals  was  lost.  But  the  forgetfulness  was  not  entire  ; 
the  memory  lingered  long  of  an  age  of  harmony,  of  an  Eden- 
garden  left  behind.  And  trailing  clouds  of  this  remembrance 
the  first  tribal  men,  on  the  edge  of  but  not  yet  within  the 
civilisation-period,  appear  in  the  dawn  of  History. 

As  I  have  said  before,  the  period  of  the  dawn  of  Self- 
consciousness  was  also  the  period  of  the  dawn  of  the  practical 
and  inquiring  Intellect  ;  it  was  the  period  of  the  babyhood 
of  both  ;  and  so  we  perceive  among  these  early  people  (as 
we  also  do  among  children)  that  while  in  the  main  the 
heart  and  the  intuitions  were  right,  the  intellect  was  for 
. 

1  “  Man  in  the  course  of  his  life  falls  away  more  and  more  from  the 
specifically  human  type  of  his  early  years,  but  the  Ape  in  the  course 
of  his  short  life  goes  very  much  farther  along  the  road  of  degradation 
and  premature  senility  **  {Man  and,  Woman,  by  Havelock  Ellis,  p.  24). 


RITUAL  DANCING 


175 


a  long  period  futile  and  rambling  to  a  degree.  As  soon  as 
the  mind  left  the  ancient  bases  of  instinct  and  sub-conscious 
racial  experience  it  fell  into  a  hopeless  bog,  out  of  which 
it  only  slowly  climbed  by  means  of  the  painfully-gathered 
stepping-stones  of  logic  and  what  we  call  Science.  “  Heaven 
lies  about  us  in  our  infancy.”  Wordsworth  perceived 
that  wonderful  world  of  inner  experience  and  glory  out  of 
which  the  child  emerges  ;  and  some  even  of  us  may  perceive 
that  similar  world  in  which  the  untampered  animals  still 
dwell,  and  out  of  which  self-regarding  Man  in  the  history 
of  the  race  was  long  ago  driven.  But  a  curse  went  with 
the  exile.  As  the  Brain  grew,  the  Heart  withered.  The 
inherited  instincts  and  racially  accumulated  wisdom,  on 
which  the  first  men  thrived  and  by  means  of  which  they 
achieved  a  kind  of  temporary  Paradise,  were  broken  up  ; 
delusions  and  disease  and  dissension  set  in.  Cain  turned 
upon  his  brother  and  slew  him  ;  and  the  shades  of  the 
prison-house  began  to  close.  The  growing  Boy,  however, 
(by  whom  we  may  understand  the  early  tribes  of  Mankind) 
had  yet  a  radiance  of  Light  and  Joy  in  his  life  ;  and  the 
Youth — though  traveling  daily  farther  from  the  East — 
still  remained  Nature’s  priest,  and  by  the  vision  splendid 
was  on  his  way  attended  :  but 

At  length  the  Man  perceived  it  die  away, 

And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

What  a  strangely  apt  picture  in  a  few  words  (if  we  like 
to  take  it  so)  of  the  long  pilgrimage  of  the  Human  Race, 
its  early  and  pathetic  clinging  to  the  tradition  of  the  Eden- 
garden,  its  careless  and  vigorous  boyhood,  its  meditative 
youth,  with  consciousness  of  sin  and  endless  expiatory 
ritual  in  Nature’s  bosom,  its  fleeting  visions  of  salvation, 
and  finally  its  complete  disillusionment  and  despair  in  the 
world-slaughter  and  unbelief  of  the  twentieth  century  ! 

Leaving  Wordsworth,  however,  and  coming  back  to  our 


176  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


main  line  of  thought,  we  may  point  out  that  while  early 
peoples  were  intellectually  mere  babies — with  their  endless 
yarns  about  heroes  on  horseback  leaping  over  wide  rivers 
or  clouds  of  monks  flying  for  hundreds  of  miles  through 
the  air,  and  their  utter  failure  to  understand  the  general 
concatenations  of  cause  and  effect — yet  practically  and  in 
their  instinct  of  life  and  destiny  they  were,  as  I  have  already 
said,  by  no  means  fools  ;  certainly  not  such  fools  as  many 
of  the  arm-chair  students  of  these  things  delight  to  represent 
them.  For  just  as,  a  few  years  ago,  we  modern  civilisees, 
studying  outlying  nations,  the  Chinese  for  instance,  rejoiced 
(in  our  vanity)  to  pick  out  every  quaint  peculiarity  and 
absurdity  and  monstrosity  of  a  supposed  topsyturveydom, 
and  failed  entirely  to  see  the  real  picture  of  a  great  and 
eminently  sensible  people  ;  so  in  the  case  of  primitive  men 
we  have  been,  and  even  still  are,  far  too  prone  to  catalogue 
their  cruelties  and  obscenities  and  idiotic  superstitions, 
and  to  miss  the  sane  and  balanced  setting  of  their  actual 
lives. 

Mr.  R.  R.  Marett,  who  has  a  good  practical  acquaintance 
with  his  subject,  had  in  the  Hibbert  Journal  for  October  1918 
an  article  on  “  The  Primitive  Medicine  Man  ”  in  which  he 
shows  that  the  latter  is  as  a  rule  anything  but  a  fool  and 
a  knave — although  like  ‘  medicals  '  in  all  ages  he  hocuspo- 
cuses  his  patients  occasionally  !  He  instances  the  medicine¬ 
man's  excellent  management,  in  most  cases,  of  childbirth, 
or  of  wounds  and  fractures,  or  his  primeval  skill  in  tre¬ 
panning  or  trephining — all  of  which  operations,  he  admits, 
may  be  accompanied  with  grotesque  and  superstitious  cere¬ 
monies,  yet  show  real  perception  and  ability.  We  all  know 
— though  I  think  the  article  does  not  mention  the  matter — 
what  a  considerable  list  there  is  of  drugs  and  herbs  which 
the  modern  art  of  healing  owes  to  the  ancient  medicine-man, 
and  it  may  be  again  mentioned  that  one  of  the  most  up-to- 
date  treatments — the  use  of  a  prolonged  and  exclusive  diet  of 
milk  as  a  means  of  giving  the  organism  a  new  start  in  severe 


RITUAL  DANCING 


177 


cases — has  really  come  down  to  us  through  the  ages  from 
this  early  source.1  The  real  medicine-man,  Mr.  Marett 
says,  is  largely  a  ‘  faith-healer '  and  ‘  soul-doctor  ’ ;  he 
believes  in  his  vocation,  and  undergoes  much  for  the  sake 
of  it :  “  The  main  point  is  to  grasp  that  by  his  special 
initiation  and  the  rigid  taboos  which  he  practises — not 
to  speak  of  occasional  remarkable  gifts,  say  of  trance  and 
ecstasy,  which  he  may  inherit  by  nature  and  have  improved 
by  art — he  has  access  to  a  wonder-working  power.  .  .  . 
And  the  great  need  of  primitive  folk  is  for  this  healer  of 
souls."  Our  author  further  insists  on  the  enormous  play 
and  influence  of  Fear  in  the  savage  mind — a  point  we  have 
touched  on  already — and  gives  instances  of  Thanatomania, 
or  cases  where,  after  a  quite  slight  and  superficial  wound, 
the  patient  becomes  so  depressed  that  he,  quite  needlessly, 
persists  in  dying  !  Such  cases,  obviously,  can  only  be  coun¬ 
tered  by  Faith,  or  something  (whatever  it  may  be)  which 
restores  courage,  hope  and  energy  to  the  mind.  Nor  need 
I  point  out  that  the  situation  is  exactly  the  same  among 
a  vast  number  of  *  patients  *  to-day.  As  to  the  value,  in 
his  degree,  of  the  medicine-man  many  modern  observers  and 
students  quite  agree  with  the  above.2  Also  as  the  present 
chapter  is  on  Ritual  Dancing  it  may  not  be  out  of  place 
to  call  attention  to  the  supposed  healing  of  sick  people 
in  Ceylon  and  other  places  by  Devil-dancing — the  enormous 
output  of  energy  and  noise  in  the  ritual  possibly  having 
the  effect  of  reanimating  the  patient  (if  it  does  not  kill 
him),  or  of  expelling  the  disease  from  his  organism. 

With  regard  to  the  practical  intelligence  of  primitive 
peoples,  derived  from  their  close  contact  with  life  and 

1  Milk  (“  fast-milk  ”  or  vrata )  was,  says  Mr.  Hewitt,  the  only  diet 
in  the  Soma-sacrifice.  See  Ruling  Races  of  Prehistoric  Times  (pre¬ 
face).  The  Soma  itself  was  a  fermented  drink  prepared  with  ceremony 
from  the  milky  and  semen-like  sap  of  certain  plants,  and  much  used 
in  sacrificial  offerings.  (See  Monier-Williams,  Sanskrit  Dictionary  ) 

2  See  Win  wood  Reade  ( Savage  Africa),  Salamon  Reinach  (Cults, 
Myths  and  Religions ),  and  others. 

12 


178  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


nature,  Bishop  Colenso’s  experiences  among  the  Zulus  may 
appropriately  be  remembered.  When  expounding  the  Bible 
to  these  supposedly  backward  ‘  niggers  5  he  was  met  at  all 
points  by  practical  interrogations  and  arguments  which  he 
was  perfectly  unable  to  answer — especially  over  the  recorded 
passage  of  the  Red  Sea  by  the  Israelites  in  a  single  night. 
From  the  statistics  given  in  the  Sacred  Book  these  naughty 
savages  proved  to  him  absolutely  conclusively  that  the 
numbers  of  the  fugitives  were  such  that  even  supposing 
them  to  have  marched — men,  women  and  children— five 
abreast  and  in  close  order,  they  would  have  formed  a  column 
ioo  miles  long,  and  this  not  including  the  baggage,  sheep 
and  cattle  !  Of  course  the  feat  was  absolutely  impossible. 
They  could  not  have  passed  the  Red  Sea  in  a  night  or  a 
week  of  nights. 

But  the  sequel  is  still  more  amusing  and  instructive. 
Colenso,  in  his  innocent  sincerity,  took  the  side  of  the  Zulus, 
and  feeling  sure  the  Church  at  home  would  be  quite  glad  to 
have  its  views  with  regard  to  the  accuracy  of  Bible  statistics 
corrected,  wrote  a  book  embodying  the  amendments  needed. 
Modest  as  his  criticisms  were,  they  raised  a  storm  of  protest 
and  angry  denunciation,  which  even  led  to  his  deposition 
for  the  time  being  from  his  bishopric  !  While  at  the  same 
time  an  avalanche  of  books  to  oppose  his  heresy  poured 
forth  from  the  press.  Lately  I  had  the  curiosity  to  look 
through  the  British  Museum  catalogue  and  found  that 
in  refutation  of  Colenso’s  Pentateuch  Examined  some  140 
(a  hundred  and  forty)  volumes  were  at  that  time  published  ! 
To-day,  I  need  hardly  say,  all  these  arm-chair  critics  and 
their  works  have  sunk  into  utter  obscurity,  but  the  argu¬ 
ments  of  the  Zulus  and  their  Bishop  still  stand  unmoved 
and  immovable. 

This  is  a  case  of  searching  intelligence  shown  by  ‘  savages/ 
an  intelligence  founded  on  intimate  knowledge  of  the  needs 
of  actual  life.  I  think  we  may  say  that  a  similarly  instinctive 
intelligence  (sub-conscious  if  you  like)  has  guided  the  tribes 


RITUAL  DANCING 


179 


of  men  on  the  whole  in  their  long  passage  through  the 
Red  Sea  of  the  centuries,  from  those  first  days  of  which  I 
speak  even  down  to  the  present  age,  and  has  in  some 
strange,  even  if  fitful,  way  kept  them  along  the  path 
of  that  final  emancipation  towards  which  Humanity  is 
inevitably  moving. 


XII 


THE  SEX-TABOO 

In  the  course  of  the  last  few  chapters  I  have  spoken  more 
than  once  of  the  solidarity  and  continuity  of  Christianity, 
in  its  essential  doctrines,  with  the  Pagan  rites.  There  is, 
however,  one  notable  exception  to  this  statement.  I 
refer  of  course  to  Christianity’s  treatment  of  Sex.  It  is 
certainly  very  remarkable  that  while  the  Pagan  cults 
generally  made  a  great  deal  of  all  sorts  of  sex-rites,  laid 
much  stress  upon  them,  and  introduced  them  in  what 
we  consider  an  unblushing  and  shameless  way  into  the 
worship  of  their  most  honoured  gods,  the  Christian  Church 
on  the  whole  took  quite  the  opposite  line — ignored  sex, 
contemned  it,  and  did  much  despite  to  the  perfectly  natural 
instincts  connected  with  it.  I  say  '  the  Christian  Church/ 
because  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  Jesus  himself  (if  we 
admit  his  figure  as  historical)  adopted  any  such  extreme 
or  doctrinaire  attitude  ;  and  the  quite  early  Christian  teachers 
(with  the  chief  exception  of  Paul)  do  not  exhibit  this  bias 
to  any  great  degree.  In  fact,  as  is  well  known,  strong 
currents  of  pagan  usage  and  belief  ran  through  the  Christian 
assemblies  of  the  first  three  or  four  centuries.  “  The  Chris¬ 
tian  art  of  this  period  remained  delightfully  pagan.  In  the 
catacombs  we  see  the  Saviour  as  a  beardless  youth,  like 
a  young  Greek  god  ;  sometimes  represented,  like  Hermes 

the  guardian  of  the  flocks,  bearing  a  ram  or  lamb  round 

iso 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


181 


his  neck  ;  sometimes  as  Orpheus  tuning  his  lute  among 
the  wild  animals  ”  1  The  followers  of  Jesus  were  at  times 
even  accused — whether  rightly  or  wrongly  I  know  not — 
of  celebrating  sexual  mysteries  at  their  love-feasts.  But 
as  the  Church  through  the  centuries  grew  in  power  and  scope 
— with  its  monks  and  their  mutilations  and  asceticisms, 
and  its  celibate  clergy,  and  its  absolute  refusal  to  recognise 
the  sexual  meaning  of  its  own  acclaimed  symbols  (like  the 
Cross,  the  three  fingers  of  Benediction,  the  Fleur  de  Lys 
and  so  forth) — it  more  and  more  consistently  defined  itself 
as  anti-sexual  in  its  outlook,  and  stood  out  in  that  way  in 
marked  contrast  to  the  earlier  Nature-religions. 

It  may  be  said  of  course  that  this  anti-sexual  tendency 
can  be  traced  in  others  of  the  pre-Christian  Churches,  es¬ 
pecially  the  later  ones,  like  the  Buddhist,  the  Egyptian, 
and  so  forth  ;  and  this  is  perfectly  true  ;  but  it  would  seem 
that  in  many  ways  the  Christian  Church  marked  the  cul¬ 
mination  of  the  tendency  ;  and  the  fact  that  other  cults 
participated  in  the  taboo  makes  us  all  the  more  ready  and 
anxious  to  inquire  into  its  real  cause. 

To  go  into  a  disquisition  on  the  Sex-rites  of  the  various 
pre-Christian  religions  would  be  '  a  large  order  '—larger 
than  I  could  attempt  to  fill  ;  but  the  general  facts  in  this 
connexion  are  fairly  patent.  We  know,  of  course,  from  the 
Bible  that  the  Syrians  in  Palestine  were  given  to  sexual 
worships.  There  were  erect  images  (phallic)  and  “  groves  ” 
(symbols  of  the  female)  on  every  high  hill  and  under  every 
green  tree  ; 2  and  these  same  images  and  the  rites  connected 
with  them  crept  into  the  Jewish  Temple  and  were  popular 
enough  to  maintain  their  footing  there  for  a  long  period 
from  King  Rehoboam  onwards,  notwithstanding  the  efforts 
of  Josiah  3  and  other  reformers  to  extirpate  them.  Moreover 
there  were  girls  and  men  (hierodouloi)  regularly  attached 
during  this  period  to  the  Jewish  Temple  as  to  the  heathen 

1  Angels'  Wings,  by  E.  Carpenter,  p.  104. 

3  1  Kings  xiv.  22-24.  3  2  Kings  xxiii. 


182  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Temples,  for  the  rendering  of  sexual  services,  which  were 
recognised  in  many  cases  as  part  of  the  ritual.  Women 
were  persuaded  that  it  was  an  honour  and  a  privilege  to 
be  fertilised  by  a  4  holy  man  ’  (a  priest  or  other  man  con¬ 
nected  with  the  rites),  and  children  resulting  from  such 
unions  were  often  called  44  Children  of  God  ” — an  appella¬ 
tion  which  no  doubt  sometimes  led  to  a  legend  of  miraculous 
birth  !  Girls  who  took  their  place  as  hierodouloi  in  the 
Temple  or  Temple-precincts  were  expected  to  surrender 
themselves  to  men-worshipers  in  the  Temple,  much  in 
the  same  way,  probably,  as  Herodotus  describes  in  the 
temple  of  the  Babylonian  Venus  Mylitta,  where  every 
native  woman,  once  in  her  life,  was  supposed  to  sit  in  the 
Temple  and  have  intercourse  with  some  stranger.1  Indeed 
the  Syrian  and  Jewish  rites  dated  largely  from  Babylonia. 
“  The  Hebrews  entering  Syria,”  says  Richard  Burton,2 
44  found  it  religionised  by  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  when  the 
Accadian  Ishtar  had  passed  West,  and  had  become  Ashtoreth, 
Ashtaroth,  or  Ashirah,  the  Anaitis  of  Armenia,  the  Phoe¬ 
nician  Astarte,  and  the  Greek  Aphrodite,  the  great  Moon- 
goddess  who  is  queen  of  Heaven  and  Love.”  The  word 
translated  44  grove  ”  as  above,  in  our  Bible,  is  in  fact  Asher  ah, 
which  connects  it  pretty  clearly  with  the  Babylonian  Queen 
of  Heaven. 

In  India  again,  in  connexion  with  the  Hindu  Temples 
and  their  rites,  we  have  exactly  the  same  institution  of 
girls  attached  to  the  Temple  service — the  Nautch-girls — 
whose  functions  in  past  times  were  certainly  sexual,  and 
whose  dances  in  honour  of  the  god  are,  even  down  to  the 
present  day,  decidedly  amatory  in  character.  Then  we 
have  the  very  numerous  lingams  (conventional  representa¬ 
tions  of  the  male  organ)  to  be  seen,  scores  and  scores  of 
them,  in  the  arcades  and  cloisters  of  the  Hindu  Temples — 

1  See  Herodotus  i.  199  ;  also  a  reference  to  this  custom  in  the  apo¬ 
cryphal  Baruch,  vi.  42,  43. 

3  The  Thousand  Nights  and  a  Night  (1886  edn.),  vol.  x,  p.  229 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


183 


to  which  women  of  all  classes,  especially  those  who  wish 
to  become  mothers,  resort,  anointing  them  copiously  with 
oil,  and  signalising  their  respect  and  devotion  to  them  in 
a  very  practical  way.  As  to  the  lingam  as  representing 
the  male  organ,  in  some  form  or  other — as  upright  stone 
or  pillar  or  obelisk  or  slender  round  tower — it  occurs  all 
over  the  world,  notably  in  Ireland,  and  forms  such  a  mem¬ 
orial  of  the  adoration  paid  by  early  folk  to  the  great  emblem 
and  instrument  of  human  fertility,  as  cannot  be  mistaken. 
The  pillars  set  up  by  Solomon  in  front  of  his  temple  were 
obviously  from  their  names— Jachin  and  Boaz  1 — meant 
to  be  emblems  of  this  kind  ;  and  the  fact  that  they  were 
crowned  with  pomegranates — the  universally  accepted 
symbol  of  the  female — confirms  and  clinches  this  interpre¬ 
tation.  The  obelisks  before  the  Egyptians’  temples  were 
signs  of  the  same  character.  The  well-known  T-shaped 
cross  was  in  use  in  pagan  lands  long  before  Christianity,  as 
a  representation  of  the  male  member,  and  also  at  the  same 
time  of  the  *  tree  ’  on  which  the  god  (Attis  or  Adonis  or 
Krishna  or  whoever  it  might  be)  was  crucified  ;  and  the 
same  symbol  combined  with  the  oval  (or  yoni)  formed 
the  Crux  Ansata  ?  of  the  old  Egyptian  ritual — a  figure 
which  is  to-day  sold  in  Cairo  as  a  potent  charm,  and  con¬ 
fessedly  indicates  the  conjunction  of  the  two  sexes  in  one 
design.3  MacLennan  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  (Oct.  1869) 
quotes  with  approval  the  words  of  Sanchoniathon,  as  saying 
that  “  men  first  worship  plants,  next  the  heavenly  bodies, 

1  “  He  shall  establish”  and  **  In  it  is  strength  ”  are  in  the  Bible  the 
marginal  interpretations  of  these  two  words. 

a  The  connexion  between  the  production  of  fire  by  means  of  the 
fire-drill  and  the  generation  of  life  by  sex-intercourse  is  a  very  obvious 
one,  and  lends  itself  to  magical  ideas.  J.  E.  Hewitt  in  his  Ruling 
Races  of  Prehistoric  Times  (1894)  says  (vol.  i,  p.  8)  that  ”  Magha, 
the  mother-goddess  worshipped  in  Asia  Minor,  was  originally  the 
socket-block  from  which  fire  was  generated  by  the  fire-drill.”  Hence 
we  have,  he  says,  the  Magi  of  Persia,  and  the  Maghadas  of  Indian 
History,  also  the  word  ‘  Magic.’ 


184  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


supposed  to  be  animals,  then  ‘  pillars  *  (emblems  of  the 
Procreator),  and  last,  the  anthropomorphic  gods/’ 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enlarge  on  this  subject.  The 
facts  of  the  connexion  of  sexual  rites  with  religious  services 
nearly  everywhere  in  the  early  world  are,  as  I  say,  suffi¬ 
ciently  patent  to  every  inquirer.  But  it  is  necessary  to 
try  to  understand  the  rationale  of  this  connexion.  To 
dispatch  all  such  cases  under  the  mere  term  “  religious 
prostitution  ”  is  no  explanation.  The  term  suggests,  of 
course,  that  the  plea  of  religion  was  used  simply  as  an 
excuse  and  a  cover  for  sexual  familiarities  ;  but  though 
this  kind  of  explanation  commends  itself,  no  doubt,  to 
the  modern  man — whose  religion  is  as  commercial  as  his 
sex-relationships  are — and  though  in  cases  no  doubt  it 
was  a  true  explanation — yet  it  is  obvious  that  among  people 
who  took  religion  seriously,  as  a  matter  of  life  and  death, 
and  who  did  not  need  hypocritical  excuses  or  covers  for 
sex-relationships,  it  cannot  be  accepted  as  in  general  the 
right  explanation.  No,  the  real  explanation  is — and  I 
will  return  to  this  presently — that  sexual  relationships  are 
so  deep  and  intimate  a  part  of  human  nature  that  from 
the  first  it  has  been  simply  impossible  to  keep  them  out 
of  religion — it  being  of  course  the  object  of  religion  to  bring 
the  whole  human  being  into  some  intelligible  relation  with 
the  physical,  moral,  and  if  you  like  supernatural  order  of 
the  great  world  around  him.  Sex  was  felt  from  the  first 
to  be  part,  and  a  foundational  part,  of  the  great  order  of 
the  world  and  of  human  nature  ;  and  therefore  to  separate 
it  from  Religion  was  unthinkable  and  a  kind  of  contradiction 
in  terms.1 

If  that  is  true — it  will  be  asked — how  was  it  that  that 
divorce  did  take  place — that  the  taboo  did  arise  ?  How 
was  it  that  the  Jews,  under  the  influence  of  Josiah  and  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  turned  their  faces  away  from  sex  and 

1  For  further  development  of  this  subject  see  ch.  xv  (pp.  244-248) 
infra. 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


185 


strenuously  opposed  the  Syrian  cults  ?  How  was  it  that 
this  reaction  extended  on  into  Christianity  and  became 
even  more  definite  in  the  Christian  Church — that  monks 
went  by  thousands  into  the  deserts  of  the  Thebaid,  and 
that  the  early  Fathers  and  Christian  apologists  could  not 
find  terms  foul  enough  to  hurl  at  Woman  as  the  symbol 
(to  them)  of  nothing  but  sex-corruption  and  delusion  ? 
How  was  it  that  this  contempt  of  the  body  and  degradation 
of  sex-things  went  on  far  into  the  Middle  Ages  of  Europe, 
and  ultimately  created  an  organised  system  of  hypocrisy, 
and  concealment  and  suppression  of  sex-instincts,  which, 
acting  as  cover  to  a  vile  commercial  Prostitution  and  as 
a  breeding  ground  for  horrible  Disease,  has  lasted  on  even 
to  the  edge  of  the  present  day  ? 

This  is  a  fair  question,  and  one  which  demands  an  answer. 
There  must  have  been  a  reason,  and  a  deep-rooted  one,  for 
this  remarkable  reaction  and  volte-face  which  has  charac¬ 
terised  Christianity,  and,  perhaps  to  a  lesser  degree,  other 
both  earlier  and  later  cults  like  those  of  the  Buddhists, 
the  Egyptians,  the  Aztecs,1  and  so  forth. 

It  may  be  said — and  this  is  a  fair  answer  on  the  surface 
of  the  problem — that  the  main  reason  was  something  in 
the  nature  of  a  reaction.  The  excesses  and  corruptions  of 
sex  in  Syria  had  evidently  become  pretty  bad,  and  that 
very  fact  may  have  led  to  a  pendulum-swing  of  the  Jewish 
Church  in  the  opposite  direction  ;  and  again  in  the  same 
way  the  general  laxity  of  morals  in  the  decay  of  the  Roman 
empire  may  have  confirmed  the  Church  of  early  Christendom 
in  its  determination  to  keep  along  the  great  high  road  of 
asceticism.  The  Christian  followed  on  the  Jewish  and 
Egyptian  Churches,  and  in  this  way  a  great  tradition  of 
sexual  continence  and  anti-pagan  morality  came  right  down 
the  centuries  even  into  modern  times. 

This  seems  so  far  a  reasonable  theory  ;  but  I  think  we 
shall  go  farther  and  get  nearer  the  heart  of  the  problem  if 

1  For  the  Aztecs,  see  Acosta,  vol.  ii,  p.  324  (London,  1604). 


186  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


we  revert  to  the  general  clue  which  I  have  followed  already 
more  than  once — the  clue  of  the  necessary  evolution  of 
human  Consciousness.  In  the  first  or  animal  stage  of 
human  evolution,  Sex  was  (as  among  the  animals)  a  per¬ 
fectly  necessary,  instinctive  and  unself-conscious  activity. 
It  was  harmonious  with  itself,  natural,  and  unproductive 
of  evil.  But  when  the  second  stage  set  in,  in  which  man 
became  preponderantly  s<?//-conscious,  he  inevitably  set 
about  deflecting  sex-activities  to  his  own  private  pleasure 
and  advantage ;  he  employed  his  budding  intellect  in 
scheming  the  derailment  of  passion  and  desire  from  tribal 
needs  and  Nature's  uses  to  the  poor  details  of  his  own 
gratification.  If  the  first  stage  of  harmonious  sex-instinct 
and  activity  may  be  held  as  characteristic  of  the  Golden 
Age,  the  second  stage  must  be  taken  to  represent  the  Fall 
of  man  and  his  expulsion  from  Paradise  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden  story.  The  pleasure  and  glory  of  Sex  having  been 
turned  to  self-purposes,  Sex  itself  became  the  great  Sin. 
A  sense  of  guilt  overspread  man’s  thoughts  on  the  subject. 
"  He  knew  that  he  was  naked,”  and  he  fled  from  the  voice 
and  face  of  the  Lord.  From  that  moment  one  of  the 
main  objects  of  his  life  (in  its  inner  and  newer  activities) 
came  to  be  the  denial  of  Sex.  Sex  was  conceived  of  as  the 
great  Antagonist,  the  old  Serpent  lying  ever  in  wait  to 
betray  him  ;  and  there  arrived  a  moment  in  the  history 
of  every  race,  and  of  every  representative  religion,  when 
the  sexual  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  older  time  lost  their 
naive  and  quasi-innocent  character  and  became  afflicted 
with  a  sense  of  guilt  and  indecency.  This  extraordinarily 
interesting  and  dramatic  moment  in  human  evolution  was 
of  course  that  in  which  self-consciousness  grew  powerful 
enough  to  penetrate  to  the  centre  of  human  vitality,  the 
sanctum  of  man’s  inner  life,  his  sexual  instinct,  and  to 
deal  it  a  terrific  blow — a  blow  from  which  it  has  never  yet 
recovered,  and  from  which  indeed  it  will  not  recover,  until 
the  very  nature  of  man’s  inner  life  is  changed. 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


187 


It  may  be  said  that  it  was  very  foolish  of  Man  to  deny 
and  to  try  to  expel  a  perfectly  natural  and  sensible  thing, 
a  necessary  and  indispensable  part  of  his  own  nature. 
And  that,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  is  perfectly  true.  But  some¬ 
times  it  is  unavoidable,  it  would  seem,  to  do  foolish  things — 
if  only  to  convince  oneself  of  one's  own  foolishness.  On 
the  other  hand,  this  policy  on  the  part  of  Man  was  certainly 
very  wise — wiser  than  he  knew— for  in  attempting  to  drive 
out  Sex  (which  of  course  he  could  not  do)  he  entered  into 
a  conflict  which  was  bound  to  end  in  the  expulsion  of  some¬ 
thing  ;  and  that  something  was  the  domination,  within 
himself,  of  self-consciousness,  the  very  thing  which  makes 
and  ever  has  made  sex  detestable.  Man  did  not  succeed 
in  driving  the  snake  out  of  the  Garden,  but  he  drove 
himself  out,  taking  the  real  old  serpent  of  self-greed  and 
self-gratification  with  him.  When  some  day  he  returns 
to  Paradise  this  latter  will  have  died  in  his  bosom  and 
been  cast  away,  but  he  will  find  the  good  Snake  there  as 
of  old,  full  of  healing  and  friendliness,  among  the  branches 
of  the  Tree  of  Life. 

Besides  it  is  evident  from  other  considerations  that 
this  moment  of  the  denial  of  sex  had  to  come.  When 
one  thinks  of  the  enormous  power  of  this  passion,  and 
its  age-long  hold  upon  the  human  race,  one  realises  that 
once  liberated  from  the  instinctive  bonds  of  nature,  and 
backed  by  a  self-conscious  and  self-seeking  human  intelli¬ 
gence  it  was  on  the  way  to  become  a  fearful  curse. 

A  monstrous  Eft  was  of  old  the  Lord  and  Master  of  Earth  ; 
For  him  did  his  high  sun  flame,  and  his  liver  billowing  ran. 

And  this  may  have  been  all  very  well  and  appropriate  in 
the  carboniferous  Epoch,  but  we  in  the  end  of  Time  have 
no  desire  to  fall  under  any  such  preposterous  domination, 
or  to  return  to  the  primal  swamps  from  which  organic 
nature  has  so  slowly  and  painfully  emerged. 


188  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


I  say  it  was  the  entry  of  self-consciousness  into  the 
sphere  of  Sex,  and  the  consequent  use  of  the  latter  for 
private  ends,  which  poisoned  this  great  race-power  at  its 
root.  For  above  all,  Sex,  as  representing  through  Child¬ 
birth  the  life  of  the  Race  (or  of  the  Tribe,  or,  if  you  like, 
of  Humanity  at  large)  should  be  sacred  and  guarded  from 
merely  selfish  aims,  and  therefore  to  use  it  only  for  such 
aims  is  indeed  a  desecration.  And  even  if — as  some  maintain 
and  I  think  rightly  1 — sex  is  not  merely  for  child-birth  and 
physical  procreation,  but  for  mutual  vitalising  and  invigora- 
tion,  it  still  subserves  union  and  not  egotism  ;  and  to  use 
it  egotistically  is  to  commit  the  sin  of  Separation  indeed. 
It  is  to  cast  away  and  corrupt  the  very  bond  of  life  and 
fellowship.  The  ancient  peoples  at  any  rate  threw  an  illu¬ 
mination  of  religious  (that  is,  of  communal  and  public) 
value  over  sex-acts,  and  to  a  great  extent  made  them  into 
matters  either  of  Temple-ritual  and  the  worship  of  the 
gods,  or  of  communal  and  pandemic  celebration,  as  in 
the  Saturnalia  and  other  similar  festivals.  We  have  cer¬ 
tainly  no  right  to  regard  these  celebrations — of  either  kind — • 
as  insincere.  They  were,  at  any  rate  in  their  inception, 
genuinely  religious  or  genuinely  social  and  festal ;  and 
from  either  point  of  view  they  were  far  better  than  the 
secrecy  of  private  indulgence  which  characterizes  our 
modern  world  in  these  matters.  The  thorough  and  shameless 
commercialism  of  Sex  has  alas  !  been  reserved  for  what  is 
called  “  Christian  civilisation,”  and  with  it  (perhaps  as 
a  necessary  consequence)  Prostitution  and  Syphilis  have 
grown  into  appalling  evils,  accompanied  by  a  gigantic  degra¬ 
dation  of  social  standards,  and  upgrowth  of  petty  Philis¬ 
tinism  and  niaiserie.  Love,  in  fact,  having  in  this  modern 
world-movement  been  denied,  and  its  natural  manifestations 
affected  with  a  sense  of  guilt  and  of  sin,  has  really  languished 
and  ceased  to  play  its  natural  part  in  life ;  and  a  vast 


1  See  Havelock  Ellis,  The  Objects  of  Marriage,  a  pamphlet  pub¬ 
lished  by  the  “  British  Society  for  the  Study  of  Sex-psychology." 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


189 


number  of  people — both  men  and  women,  finding  them¬ 
selves  barred  or  derailed  from  the  main  object  of  existence, 
have  turned  their  energies  to  ‘  business  ’  or  ‘  money¬ 
making  *  or  '  social  advancement  ’  or  something  equally 
futile,  as  the  only  poor  substitute  and  pis  alter  open  to 
them. 

Why  (again  we  ask)  did  Christianity  make  this  apparently 
great  mistake  ?  And  again  we  must  reply  :  Perhaps  the 
mistake  was  not  so  great  as  it  appears  to  be.  Perhaps  this 
was  another  case  of  the  necessity  of  learning  by  loss.  Love 
had  to  be  denied,  in  the  form  of  sex,  in  order  that  it  might 
thus  the  better  learn  its  own  true  values  and  needs.  Sex 
had  to  be  rejected,  or  defiled  with  the  sense  of  guilt  and 
self-seeking,  in  order  that  having  cast  out  its  defilement  it 
might  return  one  day,  transformed  in  the  embrace  of  love. 
The  whole  process  has  had  a  deep  and  strange  world-signi¬ 
ficance.  It  has  led  to  an  immensely  long  period  of  suppres¬ 
sion — suppression  of  two  great  instincts — the  physical 
instinct  of  sex  and  the  emotional  instinct  of  love.  Two 
things  which  should  naturally  be  conjoined  have  been 
separated  ;  and  both  have  suffered.  And  we  know  from 
the  Freudian  teachings  what  suppressions  in  the  root- 
instincts  necessarily  mean.  We  know  that  they  inevitably 
terminate  in  diseases  and  distortions  of  proper  action, 
either  in  the  body  or  in  the  mind,  or  in  both  ;  and  that 
these  evils  can  only  be  cured  by  the  liberation  of  the  said 
instincts  again  to  their  proper  expression  and  harmonious 
functioning  in  the  whole  organism.  No  wonder  then  that, 
with  this  agelong  suppression  (necessary  in  a  sense  though 
it  may  have  been)  which  marks  the  Christian  dispensation, 
there  should  have  been  associated  endless  Sickness  and 
Crime  and  sordid  Poverty,  the  Crucifixion  of  animals  in 
the  name  of  Science  and  of  human  workers  in  the  name 
of  Wealth,  and  wars  and  horrors  innumerable  !  Hercules 
writhing  in  the  Nessus-shirt  or  Prometheus  nailed  to  the 


190  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


rocks  are  only  as  figures  of  a  toy  miniature  compared  with 
this  vision  of  the  great  and  divine  Spirit  of  Man  caught 
in  the  clutches  of  those  dread  Diseases  which  through  the 
centuries  have  been  eating  into  his  very  heart  and  vitals. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  pile  on  the  Christian  Church  the 
blame  for  all  this.  It  had,  no  doubt,  its  part  to  play  in 
the  whole  great  scheme,  namely,  to  accentuate  the  self¬ 
motive  ;  and  it  played  the  part  very  thoroughly  and  suc¬ 
cessfully.  For  it  must  be  remembered  (what  I  have  again 
and  again  insisted  on)  that  in  the  pagan  cults  it  was  always 
the  salvation  of  the  clan,  the  tribe,  the  people  that  was  the 
main  consideration  ;  the  advantage  of  the  individual  took 
only  a  very  secondary  part.  But  in  Christendom — after 
the  communal  enthusiasms  of  apostolic  days  and  of  the 
medieval  and  monastic  brotherhoods  and  sisterhoods  had 
died  down — religion  occupied  itself  more  and  more  with 
each  man  or  woman’s  individual  salvation,  regardless  of 
what  might  happen  to  the  community ;  till,  with  the 
rise  of  Protestantism  and  Puritanism,  this  tendency 
reached  such  an  extreme  that,  as  some  one  has  said,  each 
man  was  absorbed  in  polishing  up  his  own  little  soul  in  a 
corner  to  himself,  in  entire  disregard  to  the  damnation 
which  might  come  to  his  neighbor.  Religion,  and  Morality 
too,  under  the  commercial  regime  became,  as  was  natural, 
perfectly  selfish.  It  was  always  :  “  Am  I  saved  ?  Am 

I  doing  the  right  thing  ?  Am  I  winning  the  favour  of 
God  and  man  ?  Will  my  claims  to  salvation  be  allowed  ? 
Did  I  make  a  good  bargain  in  allowing  Jesus  to  be  crucified 
for  me  ?  ”  The  poison  of  a  diseased  self-consciousness 
entered  into  the  whole  human  system. 

As  I  say,  one  must  not  blame  the  Christians  too  much 
for  all  this — partly  because,  after  the  communal  periods 
which  I  have  just  mentioned,  Christianity  was  evidently 
deeply  influenced  by  the  rise  of  Commercialism,  to  which 
during  the  last  two  centuries  it  has  so  carefully  and  piously 
adapted  itself ;  and  partly  because— if  our  view  is  anywhere 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


191 


near  right — this  microbial  injection  of  self-consciousness 
was  just  the  necessary  work  which  (in  conjunction  with 
commercialism)  it  had  to  perform.  But  though  one  does 
not  blame  Christianity  one  cannot  blind  oneself  to  its  defects 
— the  defects  necessarily  arising  from  the  part  it  had  to 
play.  When  one  compares  a  healthy  Pagan  ritual — say 
of  Apollo  or  Dionysus — including  its  rude  and  crude  sacrifices 
if  you  like,  but  also  including  its  whole-hearted  spontaneity 
and  dedication  to  the  common  life  and  welfare — with  the 
morbid  self-introspection  of  the  Christian  and  the  eternally 
recurring  question  “  What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved  ?  ” — the 
comparison  is  not  favourable  to  the  latter.  There  is  (at 
any  rate  in  modern  days)  a  mawkish  milk-and-wateriness 
about  the  Christian  attitude,  and  also  a  painful  self-con¬ 
sciousness,  which  is  not  pleasant ;  and  though  Nietzsche’s 
blonde  beast  is  a  sufficiently  disagreeable  animal,  one  almost 
thinks  that  it  were  better  to  be  that  than  to  go  about  with 
one’s  head  meekly  hanging  on  one  side,  and  talking  always 
of  altruism  and  self-sacrifice,  while  in  reality  one’s  heart  was 
entirely  occupied  with  the  question  of  one’s  own  salvation. 
There  is  besides  a  lamentable  want  of  grit  and  substance 
about  the  Christian  doctrines  and  ceremonials.  Somehow 
under  the  sex-taboo  they  became  spiritualised  and  etherial- 
ised  out  of  all  human  use.  Study  the  initiation-rites  of 
any  savage  tribe — with  their  strict  discipline  of  the  young 
braves  in  fortitude,  and  the  overcoming  of  pain  and  fear ; 
with  their  very  detailed  lessons  in  the  arts  of  war  and  life 
and  the  duties  of  the  grown  man  to  his  tribe  ;  and  with 
their  quite  practical  instruction  in  matters  of  Sex  ;  and 
then  read  our  poor  little  Baptismal  and  Confirmation  services, 
which  ought  to  correspond  thereto.  How  thin  and  attenu¬ 
ated  and  weak  the  latter  appear !  Or  compare  the  Holy 
Communion,  as  celebrated  in  the  sentimental  atmosphere 
of  a  Protestant  Church,  with  an  ancient  Eucharistic  feast 
of  real  jollity  and  community  of  life  under  the  acknowledged 
presence  of  the  god ;  or  the  Roman  Catholic  service  of  the 


192  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Mass,  including  its  genuflexions  and  mock  oblations  and 
droning  ritual  sing-song,  with  the  actual  sacrifice  in  early 
days  of  an  animal-god-victim  on  a  blazing  altar ;  and  I 
think  my  meaning  will  be  clear.  We  do  not  want,  of  course, 
to  return  to  all  the  crudities  and  barbarities  of  the  past ;  but 
also  we  do  not  want  to  become  attenuated  and  spiritualised 
out  of  all  mundane  sense  and  recognition,  and  to  live  in 
an  otherworld  Paradise  void  of  application  to  earthly 
affairs. 

The  sex-taboo  in  Christianity  was  apparently,  as  I  have 
said,  an  effort  of  the  human  soul  to  wrest  itself  free  from 
the  entanglement  of  physical  lust — which  lust,  though 
normal  and  appropriate  and  in  a  way  gracious  among  the 
animals,  had  through  the  domination  of  self-consciousness 
become  diseased  and  morbid  or  monstrous  in  Man.  The 
work  thus  done  has  probably  been  of  the  greatest  value  to 
the  human  race  ;  but,  just  as  in  other  cases  it  has  sometimes 
happened  that  the  effort  to  do  a  certain  work  has  resulted 
in  the  end  in  an  unbalanced  exaggeration,  so  here.  We 
are  beginning  to  see  now  the  harmful  side  of  the  repression 
of  sex,  and  are  tentatively  finding  our  way  back  again  to 
a  more  pagan  attitude.  And  as  this  return-movement  is 
taking  place  at  a  time  when,  from  many  obvious  signs, 
the  self-conscious,  grasping,  commercial  conception  of  life  is 
preparing  to  go  on  the  wane,  and  the  sense  of  solidarity 
to  re-establish  itself,  there  is  really  good  hope  that  our 
return-journey  may  prove  in  some  degree  successful. 

Man  progresses  generally,  not  both  legs  at  once  like  a 
sparrow,  but  by  putting  one  leg  forward  first,  and  then 
the  other.  There  was  this  advantage  in  the  Christian 
taboo  of  sex  that  by  discouraging  the  physical  and  sensual 
side  of  love  it  did  for  the  time  being  allow  the  spiritual 
side  to  come  forward.  But,  as  I  have  just  now  indicated, 
there  is  a  limit  to  that  process.  We  cannot  always  keep 
one  leg  first  in  walking,  and  we  do  not  want,  in  life,  always 
to  put  the  spiritual  first,  nor  always  the  material  and 


THE  SEX-TABOO  193 

sensual.  The  two  sides  in  the  long  run  have  to  keep  pace 
with  each  other. 

And  it  may  be  that  a  great  number  of  the  very  curious 
and  seemingly  senseless  taboos  that  we  find  among  the 
primitive  peoples  can  be  partly  explained  in  this  way  :  that 
is,  that  by  ruling  out  certain  directions  of  activity  they 
enabled  people  to  concentrate  more  effectually,  for  the  time 
being,  on  other  directions.  To  primitive  folk  the  great  world, 
whose  ways  are  puzzling  enough  in  all  conscience  to  us, 
must  have  been  simply  bewildering  in  its  dangers  and  com¬ 
plications.  It  was  an  amazement  of  Fear  and  Ignorance. 
Thunderbolts  might  come  at  any  moment  out  of  the  blue 
sky,  or  a  demon  out  of  an  old  tree  trunk,  or  a  devastating 
plague  out  of  a  bad  smell — or  apparently  even  out  of  nothing 
at  all !  Under  those  circumstances  it  was  perhaps  wise, 
wherever  there  was  the  smallest  suspicion  of  danger  or 
ill-luck,  to  create  a  hard  and  fast  taboo — just  as  we  tell 
our  children  on  no  account  to  walk  under  a  ladder  (thereby 
creating  a  superstition  in  their  minds),  partly  because  it 
would  take  too  long  to  explain  all  about  the  real  dangers 
of  paint-pots  and  other  things,  and  partly  because  for  the 
children  themselves  it  seems  simpler  to  have  a  fixed  and 
inviolable  law  than  to  argue  over  every  case  that  occurs 
The  priests  and  elders  among  early  folk  no  doubt  took  the 
line  of  forbiddal  of  activities,  as  safer  and  simpler,  even  if 
carried  sometimes  too  far,  than  the  opposite,  of  easy  per¬ 
mission  and  encouragement.  Taboos  multiplied— many  of 
them  quite  senseless — but  perhaps  in  this  perilous  maze 
of  the  world,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  it  really  was  simpler 
to  cut  out  a  large  part  of  the  labyrinth,  as  forbidden  ground, 
thus  rendering  it  easier  for  the  people  to  find  their  way 
in  those  portions  of  the  labyrinth  which  remained.  If 
you  read  in  Deuteronomy  (ch.  xiv)  the  list  of  birds  and 
beasts  and  fishes  permitted  for  food  among  the  Israelites, 
or  tabooed,  you  will  find  the  list  on  the  whole  reasonable, 
but  you  will  be  struck  by  some  curious  exceptions  (according 

13 


194  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

to  our  ideas),  which  are  probably  to  be  explained  by  the 
necessity  of  making  the  rules  simple  enough  to  be  compre¬ 
hended  by  everybody — even  if  they  included  the  forbiddal 
of  some  quite  eatable  animals. 

At  some  early  period,  in  Babylonia  or  Assyria,  a  very 
stringent  taboo  on  the  Sabbath  arose,  which,  taken  up  in 
turn  by  the  Jewish  and  Christian  Churches,  has  ruled  the 
Western  World  for  three  thousand  years  or  more,  and  still 
survives  in  a  quite  senseless  form  among  some  of  our  rural 
populations,  who  will  see  their  corn  rot  in  the  fields  rather 
than  save  it  on  a  Sunday.1 2  It  is  quite  likely  that  this  taboo 
in  its  first  beginning  was  due  not  to  any  need  of  a  weekly 
rest-day  (a  need  which  could  never  be  felt  among  nomad 
savages,  but  would  only  occur  in  some  kind  of  industrial 
and  stationary  civilisation),  but  to  some  superstitious  fear, 
connected  with  such  things  as  the  changes  of  the  Moon, 
and  the  probable  ill-luck  of  any  enterprise  undertaken  on 
the  seventh  day,  or  any  day  of  Moon-change.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  as  time  went  on  and  Society  became  more 
complex,  the  advantages  of  a  weekly  rest-day  (or  market- 
day)  became  more  obvious  and  that  the  priests  and  legis¬ 
lators  deliberately  turned  the  taboo  to  a  social  use.- 
The  learned  modern  Ethnologists,  however,  will  generally 
have  none  of  this  latter  idea.  As  a  rule  they  delight  in 
representing  early  peoples  as  totally  destitute  of  common 
sense  (which  is  supposed  to  be  a  monopoly  of  us  moderns  !)  ; 
and  if  the  Sabbath-arrangement  has  had  any  value  or  use 
they  insist  on  ascribing  this  to  pure  accident,  and  not  to 
the  application  of  any  sane  argument  or  reason. 

It  is  true  indeed  that  a  taboo — in  order  to  be  a  proper 
taboo — must  not  rest  in  the  general  mind  on  argument  or 
reason.  It  may  have  had  good  sense  in  the  past  or  even 

1  For  other  absurd  Sunday  taboos  see  Westermarck  on  The  Moral 
Ideas,  vol.  ii,  p.  289. 

2  For  a  ^racing  of  this  taboo  from  useless  superstition  to  practical 
utility  see  Hastings's  Ency  cl.  Religion  and  Ethics,  art.  “The  Sabbath.” 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


195 


an  underlying  good  sense  in  the  present,  but  its  foundation 
must  rest  on  something  beyond.  It  must  be  an  absolute 
/^—something  of  the  nature  of  a  Mystery  1 * 3  or  of  Religion 
or  Magic — and  not  to  be  disputed.  This  gives  it  its  blood¬ 
curdling  quality.  The  rustic  does  not  know  what  would 
happen  to  him  if  he  garnered  his  corn  on  Sunday,  nor  does 
the  diner-out  in  polite  society  know  what  would  happen 
if  he  spooned  up  his  food  with  his  knife — but  they  both 
are  stricken  with  a  sort  of  paralysis  at  the  very  suggestion 
of  infringing  these  taboos. 

Marriage-customs  have  always  been  a  fertile  field  for 
the  generation  of  taboos.  It  seems  doubtful  whether  any¬ 
thing  like  absolute  promiscuity  ever  prevailed  among  the 
human  race,  but  there  is  much  to  show  that  wide  choice 
and  intercourse  were  common  among  primitive  folk  and 
that  the  tendency  of  later  marriage  custom  has  been  on 
the  whole  to  limit  this  range  of  choice.  At  some  early  period 
the  forbiddal  of  marriage  between  those  who  bore  the  same 
totem-name  took  place.  Thus  in  Australia  “  no  man  of 
the  Emu  stock  might  marry  an  Emu  woman  ;  no  Blacksnake 
might  marry  a  Blacksnake  woman,  and  so  forth  ”  3  Among 
the  Kamilaroi  and  the  Arunta  of  S.  Australia  the  tribe  was 
divided  into  classes  or  clans,  sometimes  four,  sometimes 
eight,  and  a  man  of  one  particular  clan  was  only  marriage¬ 
able  with  a  woman  of  another  particular  clan — say  (1) 
with  (3)  or  (2)  with  (4),  and  so  on. 3  Customs  with  a  similar 
tendency,  but  different  in  detail,  seem  to  have  prevailed 
among  native  tribes  in  Central  Africa  and  N.  America. 
And  the  regulations  in  all  this  matter  have  been  so  (appar¬ 
ently)  entirely  arbitrary  in  the  various  cases  that  it  would 
almost  appear  as  if  the  bar  of  kinship  through  the  Totem 
had  been  the  excuse ,  originating  perhaps  in  some  superstition, 
but  that  the  real  and  more  abiding  object  was  simply  limit a- 

1  See  Weste  rmarck.  Ibid.,  ii.  586. 

3  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion,  i,  p.  66. 

3  See  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Native  Tribes  of  Australia. 


196 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


tion.  And  this  perhaps  was  a  wise  line  to  take.  A  taboo 
on  promiscuity  had  to  be  created,  and  for  this  purpose 
any  current  prejudice  could  be  made  use  of.1 

With  us  moderns  the  whole  matter  has  taken  a  different 
complexion.  When  we  consider  the  enormous  amount  of 
suffering  and  disease,  both  of  mind  and  body,  arising  from 
the  sex-suppression  of  which  I  have  just  spoken,  especially 
among  women,  we  see  that  mere  unreasoning  taboos — 
which  possibly  had  their  place  and  use  in  the  past — can 
be  tolerated  no  longer.  We  are  bound  to  turn  the  search¬ 
light  of  reason  and  science  on  a  number  of  superstitions 
which  still  linger  in  the  dark  and  musty  places  of  the 
Churches  and  the  Law  courts.  Modern  inquiry  has  shown 
conclusively  not  only  the  foundational  importance  of  sex 
in  the  evolution  of  each  human  being,  but  also  the  very 
great  variety  of  its  spontaneous  manifestations  in  different 
individuals  and  the  vital  necessity  that  these  should  be 
recognised,  if  society  is  ever  to  expand  into  a  rational 
human  form.  It  is  not  my  object  here  to  sketch  the  future 
of  marriage  and  sex-relations  generally — a  subject  which 
is  now  being  dealt  with  very  effectively  from  many  sides  ; 
but  only  to  insist  on  our  using  our  good  sense  in  the  whole 
matter,  and  refusing  any  longer  to  be  bound  by  senseless 
pre-judgments. 

Something  of  the  same  kind  may  be  said  with  regard  to 
Nakedness,  which  in  modern  Civilisation  has  become  the 
object  of  a  very  serious  and  indeed  harmful  taboo,  both 
of  speech  and  act.  As  someone  has  said,  it  became  in  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century  almost  a  crime  to  mention 
by  name  any  portion  of  the  human  body  within  a  radius 
of  about  twenty  inches  from  its  centre  (!)  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  a  few  dress-reformers  of  that  period  were  actually 
brought  into  court  and  treated  as  criminals  for  going  about 
with  legs  bare  up  to  the  knees,  and  shoulders  and  chest 

1  The  author  of  The  Mystic  Rose  seems  to  take  this  view.  See 
p.  214  of  that  book. 


THE  SEX-TABOO 


197 


uncovered  !  Public  follies  such  as  these  have  been  re¬ 
sponsible  for  much  of  the  bodily  and  mental  disease  and 
suppression  just  mentioned,  and  the  sooner  they  are  sent 
to  limbo  the  better.  No  sensible  person  would  advocate 
promiscuous  nakedness  any  more  than  promiscuous  sex- 
relationship  ;  nor  is  it  likely  that  aged  and  deformed 
people  would  at  any  time  wish  to  expose  themselves.  But 
surely  there  is  enough  good  sense  and  appreciation  of  grace 
and  fitness  in  the  average  human  mind  for  it  to  be  able 
to  liberate  the  body  from  senseless  concealment,  and  give 
it  its  due  expression.  The  Greeks  of  old,  having  on  the 
whole  clean  bodies,  treated  them  with  respect  and  dis¬ 
tinction.  The  young  men  appeared  quite  naked  in  the 
palaestra ,  and  even  the  girls  of  Sparta  ran  races  publicly 
in  the  same  condition  ;  1 2  and  some  day  when  our  bodies 
(and  minds  too)  have  become  clean  we  shall  return  to  similar 
institutions.  But  that  will  not  be  just  yet.  As  long  as 
the  defilement  of  this  commercial  civilisation  is  on  us  we 
shall  prefer  our  dirt  and  concealment.  The  powers  that 
be  will  protest  against  change.  Heinrich  Scham,  in  his 
charming  little  pamphlet  Nackende  Menscheny  describes 
the  consternation  of  the  commercial  people  at  such  ideas  : 

What  will  become  of  us/  cried  the  tailors,  '  if  you 
go  naked  ?  * 

"  And  all  the  lot  of  them,  hat,  cravat,  shirt,  and  shoe¬ 
makers  joined  in  the  chorus. 

“  ‘And  where  shall  I  carry  my  money  ?  ’  cried  one  who 
had  just  been  made  a  director/' 

1  See  Theocritus,  Idyll  xviii. 

2  Published  at  Leipzig  about  1893. 


XIII 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

Referring  back  to  the  existence  of  something  resembling 
a  great  World-religion  which  has  come  down  the  centuries, 
continually  expanding  and  branching  in  the  process,  we 
have  now  to  consider  the  genesis  of  that  special  brand  or 
branch  of  it  which  we  call  Christianity.  Each  religion  or 
cult,  pagan  or  Christian,  has  had,  as  we  have  seen,  a  vast 
amount  in  common  with  the  general  World-religion  ;  yet 
each  has  had  its  own  special  characteristics.  What  have 
been  the  main  characteristics  of  the  Christian  branch,  as 
differentiating  it  from  the  other  branches  ? 

We  saw  in  the  last  chapter  that  a  certain  ascetic  attitude 
towards  Sex  was  one  of  the  most  salient  marks  of  the 
Christian  Church  :  and  that  whereas  most  of  the  pagan 
cults  (though  occasionally  favouring  frightful  austerities 
and  cruel  sacrifices)  did  on  the  whole  rejoice  in  pleasure 
and  the  world  of  the  senses,  Christianity — following  largely 
on  Judaism — displayed  a  tendency  towards  renunciation 
of  the  world  and  the  flesh,  and  a  withdrawal  into  the  inner 
and  more  spiritual  regions  of  the  mind.  The  same  tendency 
may  be  traced  in  the  Egyptian  and  Phrygian  cults  of  that 
period.  It  will  be  remembered  how  Juvenal  (Sat.  VI, 
510-40)  chaffs  the  priests  of  Cybele  at  Rome  for  making 
themselves  “  eunuchs  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven’s  sake,” 
or  the  rich  Roman  lady  for  plunging  in  the  wintry  Tiber 

198 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  199 


for  a  propitiation  to  Isis.  No  doubt  among  the  later  pagans 
“  the  long  intolerable  tyranny  of  the  senses  over  the  soul  ” 
had  become  a  very  serious  matter.  But  Christianity 
represented  perhaps  the  most  powerful  reaction  against 
this  ;  and  this  reaction  had,  as  indicated  in  the  last  chapter, 
the  enormously  valuable  result  that  (for  the  time)  it  dis¬ 
entangled  love  from  sex  and  established  Love,  pure  and 
undefiled,  as  ruler  of  the  world.  “  God  of  Love.”  But,  as 
also  indicated,  the  divorce  between  the  two  elements  of 
human  nature,  carried  to  an  extreme,  led  in  time  to  a 
crippling  of  both  elements  and  the  development  of  a  certain 
morbidity  and  self-consciousness  which,  it  cannot  be  denied, 
is  painfully  marked  among  some  sections  of  Christians — 
especially  those  of  the  altruistic  and  ‘  philanthropic  *  type. 

Another  characteristic  of  Christianity  which  is  also  very 
fine  in  its  way  but  has  its  limits  of  utility,  has  been  its 
insistence  on  "  morality.”  Some  modern  writers  indeed 
have  gone  so  far — forgetting,  I  suppose,  the  Stoics — 
as  to  claim  that  Christianity’s  chief  mark  is  its  high 
morality,  and  that  the  pagans  generally  were  quite 
wanting  in  the  moral  sense  !  This,  of  course,  is  a 
profound  mistake.  I  should  say  that,  in  the  true  sense 
of  the  word,  the  early  and  tribal  peoples  have  been  much 
more  *  moral  ’  as  a  rule — that  is,  ready  as  individuals  to 
pay  respect  to  the  needs  of  the  community — than  the  later 
and  more  civilised  societies.  But  the  mistake  arises  from 
the  different  interpretations  of  the  word ;  for  whereas 
all  the  pagan  religions  insisted  very  strongly  on  the  just- 
mentioned  kind  of  morality,  which  we  should  call  civic 
duty  to  ones  neighbor,  the  Christians  made  morality  to  con¬ 
sist  more  especially  in  a  man’s  duty  to  God.  It  became 
with  them  a  private  affair  between  a  man’s  self  and  God, 
rather  than  a  public  affair  ;  and  thus  led  in  the  end  to  a 
very  obnoxious  and  quite  pharisaic  kind  of  morality,  whose 
chief  inspiration  was  not  the  helping  of  one’s  fellow-man 
but  the  saving  of  one’s  own  soul. 


200  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

There  may  perhaps  be  other  salient  points  of  differentiation 
between  Christianity  and  the  preceding  pagan  religions  ; 
but  for  the  present  we  may  recognise  these  two— (a)  the 
tendency  towards  a  renunciation  of  the  world,  and  the 
consequent  cultivation  of  a  purely  spiritual  love  and  ( b ) 
the  insistence  on  a  morality  whose  inspiration  was  a  private 
sense  of  duty  to  God  rather  than  a  public  sense  of  duty  to 
one's  neighbor  and  to  society  generally.  It  may  be  inter¬ 
esting  to  trace  the  causes  which  led  to  this  differentiation. 

Three  centuries  before  our  era  the  conquests  of  Alexander 
had  had  the  effect  of  spreading  the  Greek  thought  and 
culture  over  most  of  the  known  world.  A  vast  number 
of  small  bodies  of  worshipers  of  local  deities,  with  their 
various  rituals  and  religious  customs,  had  thus  been  broken 
up,  or  at  least  brought  into  contact  with  each  other  and 
partially  modified  and  hellenised.  The  orbit  of  a  more 
general  conception  of  life  and  religion  was  already  being 
traced.  By  the  time  of  the  founding  of  the  first  Christian 
Church  the  immense  conquests  of  Rome  had  greatly  ex¬ 
tended  and  established  the  process.  The  Mediterranean 
had  become  a  great  Roman  lake.  Merchant  ships  and 
routes  of  traffic  crossed  it  in  all  directions  ;  tourists  visited 
its  shores.  The  known  world  had  become  one.  The 
numberless  peoples,  tribes,  nations,  societies  within  the 
girdle  of  the  Empire,  with  their  various  languages,  creeds, 
customs,  religions,  philosophies,  were  profoundly  influencing 
each  other.1  A  great  fusion  was  taking  place  ;  and  it  was 
becoming  inevitable  that  the  next  great  religious  movement 
would  have  a  world-wide  character. 

It  was  probable  that  this  new  religion  would  combine 
many  elements  from  the  preceding  rituals  in  one  cult.  In 

1  For  an  enlargement  on  this  theme  see  Glover’s  Conflict  of  Religions 
in  the  early  Roman,  Empire  ;  also  S.  J.  Case,  Evolution  of  Early  Chris¬ 
tianity  (University  of  Chicago,  1914).  The  Adonis  worship,  for  in¬ 
stance,  (a  resurrection-cult)  “  was  still  thriving  in  Syria  and  Cyprus 
when  Paul  preached  there,  and  the  worship  of  Isis  and  Serapis  had 
already  reached  Athens,  Rome  and  Naples. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


201 


connexion  with  the  fine  temples  and  elaborate  services  of 
Isis  and  Cj^bele  and  Mithra  there  was  growing  up  a  powerful 
priesthood ;  Franz  Cumont  1 2  speaks  of  “  the  learned  priests 
of  the  Asiatic  cults  ”  as  building  up,  on  the  foundations 
of  old  fetichism  and  superstition,  a  complete  religious 
philosophy — just  as  the  Brahmins  had  built  the  monism 
of  the  Vedanta  on  the  “  monstrous  idolatries  of  Hinduism.’ ’ 
And  it  was  likely  that  a  similar  process  would  evolve  the 
new  religion  expected.  Toutain  again  calls  attention  to 
the  patronage  accorded  to  all  these  cults  by  the  Roman 
Emperors,  as  favouring  a  new  combination  and  synthesis  : 
— “  Hadrien,  Commode,  Septime  Severe,  Julia  Domna, 
Elagabal,  Alexandre  Severe,  en  particulier  ont  contribue 
personnellement  a  la  popularity  et  au  succes  des  cultes 
qui  se  celebraient  en  l’honneur  de  Serapis  et  d’Isis,  des 
divinites  syriennes  et  de  Mithra.”  3 

It  was  also  probable  that  this  new  Religion  would  show 
(as  indicated  in  the  last  chapter)  a  reaction  against  mere 
sex-indulgence  ;  and,  as  regards  its  standard  of  Morality 
generally,  that,  among  so  many  conflicting  peoples  with 
their  various  civic  and  local  customs,  it  could  not  well 
identify  itself  with  any  one  of  these  but  would  evolve  an 
inner  inspiration  of  its  own  which  in  its  best  form  would 
be  love  of  the  neighbor,  regardless  of  the  race,  creed  or 
customs  of  the  neighbor,  and  whose  sanction  would  not 
reside  in  any  of  the  external  authorities  thus  conflicting 
with  each  other,  but  in  the  sense  of  the  soul’s  direct  responsi¬ 
bility  to  God. 

So  much  for  what  we  might  expect  a  priori  as  to  the 
influence  of  the  surroundings  on  the  general  form  of  the 
new  Religion.  And  what  about  the  kind  of  creed  or  creeds 
which  that  religion  would  favour  ?  Here  again  we  must 
see  that  the  influence  of  the  surroundings  compelled  a 

1  See  Cumont,  Religions  Orientates  dans  le  Paganisme  Romain 

(Paris,  1906),  p.  253. 

2  Cultes  paiens  dans  l’ Empire  Romain  (2  vols.,  1911),  vol.  ii,  p.  263. 


202  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


certain  result.  Those  doctrines  which  we  have  described 
in  the  preceding  chapters— doctrines  of  Sin  and  Sacrifice, 
a  Saviour,  the  Eucharist,  the  Trinity,  the  Virgin-birth, 
and  so  forth — were  in  their  various  forms  seething,  so  to 
speak,  all  around.  It  was  impossible  for  any  new  religious 
synthesis  to  escape  them  ;  all  it  could  do  would  be  to 
appropriate  them,  and  to  give  them  perhaps  a  colour  of 
its  own.  Thus  it  is  into  the  midst  of  this  germinating  mass 
that  we  must  imagine  the  various  pagan  cults,  like  fertilising 
streams,  descending.  To  trace  all  these  streams  would 
of  course  be  an  impossible  task  ;  but  it  may  be  of  use,  as 
an  example  of  the  process,  to  take  the  case  of  some  par¬ 
ticular  belief.  Let  us  take  the  belief  in  the  coming  of  a 
Saviour-god  ;  and  this  will  be  the  more  suitable  as  it  is  a 
belief  which  has  in  the  past  been  commonly  held  to  be 
distinctive  of  Christianity.  Of  course  we  know  now  that 
it  is  not  in  any  sense  distinctive,  but  that  the  long  tradition 
of  the  Saviour  comes  down  from  the  remotest  times,  and 
perhaps  from  every  country  of  the  world.1  The  Messianic 
prophecies  of  the  Jews  and  the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah 
emptied  themselves  into  the  Christian  teachings,  and  in¬ 
fected  them  to  some  degree  with  a  Judaic  tinge.  The 
“  Messiah  ”  means  of  course  the  Anointed  One.  The 
Hebrew  word  occurs  some  40  times  in  the  Old  Testament  ; 
and  each  time  in  the  Septuagint  or  Greek  translation 
(made  mainly  in  the  third  century  before  our  era)  the  word 
is  translated  xpioroQ,  or  Christos,  which  again  means 
Anointed.  Thus  we  see  that  the  idea  or  the  word  “  The 
Christ  ”  was  in  vogue  in  Alexandria  as  far  back  certainly 
as  280  b.c.,  or  nearly  three  centuries  before  Jesus.  And  what 
the  word  “  The  Anointed  ”  strictly  speaking  means,  and 
from  what  the  expression  is  probably  derived,  will  appear 
later.  In  The  Book  of  Enoch ,  written  not  later  than  b.c. 
170, 2  the  Christ  is  spoken  of  as  already  existing  in  heaven, 

1  Even  to-day  the  Arabian  lands  are  always  vibrating  Avith  pro¬ 
phecies  of  a  coming  Mahdi. 

3  See  Edition  by  R.  H.  Charles  (1893). 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  208 


and  about  to  come  as  Judge  of  all  men,  and  is  definitely 
called  “  the  Son  of  Man."  The  Book  of  Revelations  is 
full  of  passages  from  Enoch  ;  so  are  the  Epistles  of  Paul ; 
so  too  the  Gospels.  The  Book  of  Enoch  believes  in  a  Golden 
Age  that  is  to  come  ;  it  has  Dantesque  visions  of  Heaven 
and  Hell,  and  of  Angels  good  and  evil,  and  it  speaks  of  a 
“  garden  of  Righteousness  "  with  the  “  Tree  of  Wisdom  " 
in  its  midst.  Everywhere,  says  Prof.  Drews,  in  the  first 
century  B.c.,  there  was  the  longing  for  a  coming  Saviour. 

But  the  Saviour-god,  as  we  also  know,  was  a  familiar 
figure  in  Egypt.  The  great  Osiris  was  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  both  in  his  life  and  death  :  in  his  life  through  the 
noble  works  he  wrought  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  and  in 
his  death  through  his  betrayal  by  the  powers  of  darkness 
and  his  resurrection  from  the  tomb  and  ascent  into  heaven.1 
The  Egyptian  doctrines  descended  through  Alexandria 
into  Christianity — and  though  they  did  not  influence  the 
latter  deeply  until  about  300  A.D.,  yet  they  then  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  Christian  Churches,  giving  a  colour  to  their 
teachings  with  regard  to  the  Saviour,  and  persuading  them 
to  accept  and  honour  the  Egyptian  worship  of  Isis  in  the 
Christian  form  of  the  Virgin  Mary. 

Again,  another  great  stream  of  influence  descended  from 
Persia  in  the  form  of  the  cult  of  Mithra.  Mithra,  as  we 
have  seen,2  stood  as  a  great  Mediator  between  God  and  man. 
With  his  baptisms  and  eucharists,  and  his  twelve  disciples, 
and  his  birth  in  a  cave,  and  so  forth,  he  seemed  to  the 
early  Fathers  an  invention  of  the  devil  and  a  most  dangerous 
mockery  on  Christianity — and  all  the  more  so  because  his 
worship  was  becoming  so  exceedingly  popular.  The  cult 
seems  to  have  reached  Rome  about  b.c.  70.  It  spread 
far  and  wide  through  the  Empire.  It  extended  to  Great 
Britain,  and  numerous  remains  of  Mithraic  monuments 
and  sculptures  in  this  country — at  York,  Chester  and  other 
places — testify  to  its  wide  acceptance  even  here.  At 


1  See  ch.  ii,  supra. 


Supra,  ch.  ii. 


2 


204  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Rome  the  vogue  of  Mithraism  became  so  great  that  in 
the  third  century  a.d.,  it  was  quite  doubtful 1  whether  it 
or  Christianity  would  triumph  ;  the  Emperor  Aurelian  in 
273  founded  a  cult  of  the  Invincible  Sun  in  connexion 
with  Mithraism  ; 2 3  and  as  St.  Jerome  tells  us  in  his  letters, 3 
the  latter  cult  had  at  a  later  time  to  be  suppressed  in  Rome 
and  Alexandria  by  physical  force,  so  powerful  was  it. 

Nor  was  force  the  only  method  employed.  Imitation  is 
not  only  the  sincerest  flattery,  but  it  is  often  the  most 
subtle  and  effective  way  of  defeating  a  rival.  The  priests 
of  the  rising  Christian  Church  were,,  like  the  priests  of 
all  religions,  not  wanting  in  craft ;  and  at  this  moment 
when  the  question  of  a  World-religion  was  in  the  balance,  it 
was  an  obvious  policy  for  them  to  throw  into  their  own  scale 
as  many  elements  as  possible  of  the  popular  Pagan  cults. 
Mithraism  had  been  flourishing  for  600  years  ;  and  it  is, 
to  say  the  least,  curious  that  the  Mithraic  doctrines  and 
legends  which  I  have  just  mentioned  should  all  have  been 
adopted  (quite  unintentionally  of  course  !)  into  Christianity  ; 
and  still  more  so  that  some  others  from  the  same  source, 
like  the  legend  of  the  Shepherds  at  the  Nativity  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  and  Ascension,  which  are 
not  mentioned  at  all  in  the  original  draft  of  the  earliest 
Gospel  (St.  Mark),  should  have  made  their  appearance  in 
the  Christian  writings  at  a  later  time,  when  Mithraism 
was  making  great  forward  strides.  History  shows  that 
as  a  Church  progresses  and  expands  it  generally  feels 


1  See  Cumont,  op.  cit.,  who  says,  p.  171  : — "  Jamais,  pas  meme 
&  l’epoque  des  invasions  mussulmanes,  l’Europe  ne  sembla  plus  pr6s 
de  devenir  asiatique  qu’au  moment  oil  Diocletien  reconnaissait  ofhciel- 
lement  en  Mithra  le  protecteur  de  l’empire  reconstitue.”  See  also 
Cumont  s  My  steves  de  Mithra,  preface.  The  Roman  Army,  in  fact, 
stuck  to  Mithra  throughout,  as  against  Christianity  ;  and  so  did  the 
Roman  nobility.  (See  S.  Augustine’s  Confessions,  Book  VIII,  ch.  2.) 

a  Cumont  indeed  says  that  the  identification  of  Mithra  with  the 
Sun  (the  emblem  of  imperial  power)  formed  one  reason  why  Mithraism 
was  not  persecuted  at  that  time. 

3  Epist.  cvii,  ad  Laeiam.  See  Robertson’s  Pagan  Christs,  p.  350. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  205 


compelled  to  enlarge  and  fortify  its  own  foundations  by 
inserting  material  which  was  not  there  at  first.  I  shall 
shortly  give  another  illustration  of  this  ;  at  present  I 
will  merely  point  out  that  the  Christian  writers,  as  time 
went  on,  not  only  introduced  new  doctrines,  legends, 
miracles  and  so  forth — most  of  which  we  can  trace  to 
antecedent  pagan  sources — but  that  they  took  especial  pains 
to  destroy  the  pagan  records  and  so  obliterate  the  evidence 
of  their  own  dishonesty.  We  learn  from  Porphyry  1  that 
there  were  several  elaborate  treatises  setting  forth  the 
religion  of  Mithra ;  and  J.  M.  Robertson  adds  (Pagan 
Christs,  p.  325)  :  “  everyone  of  these  has  been  destroyed  by 
the  care  of  the  Church,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  even  the 
treatise  of  Firmicus  is  mutilated  at  a  passage  (v.)  where 
he  seems  to  be  accusing  Christians  of  following  Mithraic 
usages."  While  again  Professor  Murray  says,  “  The  polemic 
literature  of  Christianity  is  loud  and  triumphant ;  the 
books  of  the  Pagans  have  been  destroyed.”  * 

Returning  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Saviour,  I  have  already 
in  preceding  chapters  given  so  many  instances  of  belief 
in  such  a  deity  among  the  pagans — whether  he  be  called 
Krishna  or  Mithra  or  Osiris  or  Horus  or  Apollo  or  Hercules 
— that  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell  on  the  subject  any  further 
in  order  to  persuade  the  reader  that  the  doctrine  was  ‘  in 
the  air  ’  at  the  time  of  the  advent  of  Christianity.  Even 
Dionysus,  then  a  prominent  figure  in  the  ‘  Mysteries/ 
was  called  Eleutherios,  The  Deliverer.  But  it  may  be  of 
interest  to  trace  the  same  doctrine  among  the  pre-Christian 
sects  of  Gnostics.  The  Gnostics,  says  Professor  Murray, 3 
“  are  still  commonly  thought  of  as  a  body  of  Christian 
heretics.  In  reality  there  were  Gnostic  sects  scattered  over 

1  De  Abstinentia,  ii.  56;  iv.  16. 

2  Four  Stages,  p.  180.  We  have  probably  an  instance  of  this 
destruction  in  the  total  disappearance  of  Celsus’  lively  attack  on 
Christianity  (180  a.d.),  of  which,  however,  portions  have  been 
fortunately  preserved  in  Origen's  rather  prolix  refutation  of  the  same. 

3  Four  Stages,  p.  143. 


206  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

the  Hellenistic  world  before  Christianity  as  well  as  after. 
They  must  have  been  established  in  Antioch  and  probably 
in  Tarsus  well  before  the  days  of  Paul  or  Apollos.  Their 
Saviour,  like  the  Jewish  Messiah,  was  established  in  men’s 
minds  before  the  Saviour  of  the  Christians.  7  If  we  look 
close,  says  Professor  Bousset,  f  the  result  emerges  with 
great  clearness  that  the  figure  of  the  Redeemer  as  such  did 
not  wait  for  Christianity  to  force  its  way  into  the  religion 
of  Gnosis,  but  was  already  present  there  under  various 
forms.’  ” 

This  Gnostic  Redeemer,  continues  Professor  Murray,  “  is 
descended  by  a  fairly  clear  genealogy  from  the  ‘  Tritos 
Soter  (  third  Saviour  ’)*  of  early  Greece,  contaminated 
with  similar  figures,  like  Attis  and  Adonis  from  Asia  Minor, 
Osiris  from  Egypt,  and  the  special  Jewish  conception  of 
the  Messiah  of  the  Chosen  people.  He  has  various  names, 
which  "the"Tiame~  of  Jesus  or  *  Christos,’  *  the  Anointed,’ 
tends  gradually  to  supersede.  Above  all,  he  is  in  some 
sense  Mari,  or  r  the  second  Man  ’  or  ‘  the  Son  of  Man  ’ 

He  is  the  real,  the  ultimate,  the  perfect  and  eternal  Man, 
of  whom  all  bodily  men  are  feeble  copies.” 1  2 3 

This  passage  brings  vividly  before  the  mind  the  process 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  namely,  the  fusion  and  mutual 
interchange  of  ideas  on  the  subject  of  the  Saviour  during 
the  period  anterior  to  our  era.  Also  it  exemplifies  to  us 
through  what  an  abstract  sphere  of  Gnostic  religious  specula¬ 
tion  the  doctrine  had  to  travel  before  reaching  its  expression 
in  Christianity.  3  This  exalted  and  high  philosophical 

1  There  seems  to  be  some  doubt  about  the  exact  meaning  of  this 
expression.  Even  Zeus  himself  was  sometimes  called  ‘  Soter,'  and 
at  feasts,  it  is  said,  the  third,  goblet  was  always  drunk  in  his  honour. 

2  See  also  The  Gnostic  Story  of  Jesus  Christ,  by  Gilbert  T.  Sadler 
(C.  W.  Daniel,  1919). 

3  When  traveling  in  India  I  found  that  the  Gnanis  or  Wise  Men 
there  quite  commonly  maintained  that  Jesus  (judging  from  his  teach- 

ing)  must  have  been  initiated  at  some  time  in  the  esoteric  doctrines 
of  the  Vedanta. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  207 

conception  passed  on  and  came  out  again  to  some  degree 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  the  Pauline  Epistles  (especially 
i  Cor.  xv)  ;  but  I  need  hardly  say  it  was  not  maintained. 
The  enthusiasm  of  the  little  scattered  Christian  bodies— 
with  their  communism  of  practice  with  regard  to  this 
world  and  their  intensity  of  faith  with  regard  to  the  next 
— began  to  wane  in  the  second  and  third  centuries  a.d. 
As  the  Church  (with  capital  initial)  grew,  so  was  it  less 
and  less  occupied  with  real  religious  feeling,  and  more  and 
more  with  its  battles  against  persecution  from  outside, 
and  its  quarrels  and  dissensions  concerning  heresies  within 
its  own  borders.  And  when  at  the  Council  of  Nic$a  (325 
A.D.)  it  endeavoured  to  establish  an  official  creed,  the 
strife  and  bitterness  only  increased.  “There  is  no  wild 
beast,  said  the  Emperor  Julian,  “  like  an  angry  theologian.” 
Where  the  fourth  Evangelist  had  preached  the  gospel  of 
Love,  and  Paul  had  announced  redemption  by  an  inner  and 
spiritual  identification  with  Christ,  “  As  in  Adam  all  die, 
so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive  ”  ;  and  whereas  some 
at  any  rate  of  the  Pagan  cults  had  taught  a  glorious  salva¬ 
tion  by  the  new  birth  of  a  divine  being  within  each  man  : 
“Be  of  good  cheer ,  0  initiates  in  the  mystery  of  the  liberated 
god  ;  L  or  to  you  too  out  of  all  your  labours  and  sorrows  shall 
come  Liberation  ” — the  Nicene  creed  had  nothing  to  pro¬ 
pound  except  some  extremely  futile  speculations  about 
the  relation  to  each  other  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and 
the  relation  of  both  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  of  all  three  to 
the  Virgin  Mary— speculations  which  only  served  for  the 
renewal  of  shameful  strife  and  animosities— riots  and  blood¬ 
shed  and  murder— within  the  Church,  and  the  mockery  of 
the  heathen  without.  And  as  far  as  it  dealt  with  the  cruci¬ 
fixion,  death  and  resurrection  of  the  Lord  it  did  not  differ 
from  the  score  of  preceding  pagan  creeds,  except  in  the 
thorough  materialism  and  lack  of  poetry  in  statement 
which  it  exhibits.  After  the  Council  of  Niccea,  in  fact, 
the  Judaic  tinge  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  becomes 


208  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


more  apparent,  and  more  and  more  its  Scheme  of  Salvation 
through  Christ  takes  the  character  of  a  rather  sordid  and 
huckstering  bargain  by  which  Man  gets  the  better  of  God 
by  persuading  the  latter  to  sacrifice  his  own  Son  for  the 
redemption  of  the  world  !  With  the  exception  of  a  few 
episodes  like  the  formation  during  the  Middle  Ages  of  the 
noble  brotherhoods  and  sisterhoods  of  Friars  and  Nuns, 
dedicated  to  the  help  and  healing  of  suffering  humanity, 
and  the  appearance  of  a  few  real  lovers  of  mankind  (and  the 
animals)  like  St.  Francis — (and  these  manifestations  can 
hardly  be  claimed  by  the  Church,  which  pretty  consistently 
opposed  them) — it  may  be  said  that  after  about  the  fourth 
century  the  real  spirit  and  light  of  early  Christian  enthusi¬ 
asm  died  away.  The  incursions  of  barbarian  tribes  from  the 
North  and  East,  and  later  of  Moors  and  Arabs  from  the  South, 
familiarised  the  European  peoples  with  the  ideas  of  blood¬ 
shed  and  violence  ;  gross  and  material  conceptions  of  life 
were  in  the  ascendant  ;  and  a  romantic  and  aspiring  Christi¬ 
anity  gave  place  to  a  worldly  and  vulgar  Churchianity. 

*  I  have  in  these  two  or  three  pages  dealt  only — and  that 
very  briefly — with  the  entry  of  the  pagan  doctrine  of  the 
Saviour  into  the  Christian  field,  showing  its  transformation 
there  and  how  Christianity  could  not  well  escape  having 
a  doctrine  of  a  Saviour,  or  avoid  giving  a  colour  of  its  own 
to  that  doctrine.  To  follow  out  the  same  course  with 
other  doctrines,  like  those  which  I  have  mentioned  above, 
would  obviously  be  an  endless  task — which  must  be  left 
to  each  student  or  reader  to  pursue  according  to  his  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  capacity.  It  is  clear  anyhow,  that  all  these 
elements  of  the  pagan  religions — pouring  down  into  the  vast 
reservoir,  or  rather  whirlpool,  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and 
mixing  among  all  these  numerous  brotherhoods,  societies, 
collegia,  mystery-clubs,  and  groups  which  were  at  that 
time  looking  out  intently  for  some  new  revelation  or  in¬ 
spiration — did  more  or  less  automatically  act  and  react 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  209 

upon  each  other,  and  by  the  general  conditions  prevailing 
were  modified,  till  they  ultimately  combined  and  took 
united  shape  in  the  movement  which  we  call  Christianity, 
but  which  only — as  I  have  said — narrowly  escaped  being 
called  Mithraism— so  nearly  related  and  closely  allied  were 
these  cults  with  each  other. 

c&t  this  point  it  will  naturally  be  asked  :  “  And  where 
in  this  scheme  of  the  Genesis  of  Christianity  is  the  chief 
figure  and  accredited  leader  of  the  movement — namely 
Jesus  Christ  himself — for  to  all  appearance  in  the  account 
here  given  of  the  matter  he  is  practically  non-existent  or 
a  negligible  quantity  ?  ”  And  the  question  is  a  very 
pertinent  one,  and  very  difficult  to  answer.  “  Where  is 
the  founder  of  the  Religion  ?  ” — or  to  put  it  in  another 
form  :  Is  it  necessary  to  suppose  a  human  and  visible 

Founder  at  all  ?  A  few  years  ago  such  a  mere  question 
would  have  been  accounted  rank  blasphemy,  and  would 
only  if  passed  over — have  been  ignored  on  account  of 
its  supposed  absurdity.  To-day,  however,  owing  to  the 
enormous  amount  of  work  which  has  been  done  of  late 
on  the  subject  of  Christian  origins,  the  question  takes  on 
quite  a  different  complexion.  And  from  Strauss  onwards 
a  growingly  influential  and  learned  body  of  critics  is  inclined 
to  regard  the  whole  story  of  the  Gospels  as  legendary)^  Arthur 
Drews,  for  instance,  a  professor  at  Karlsruhe,  in  his  cele¬ 
brated  book  The  Christ-Myth,1  places  David  F.  Strauss  as 
first  in  the  myth  field — though  he  allows  that  Dupuis  in 
L’origine  de  tons  les  cultes  (1795)  had  given  the  clue  to  the 
whole  idea.  He  then  mentions  Bruno  Bauer  (1877)  as 
contending  that  Jesus  was  a  pure  invention  of  Mark’s,  and 
John  M.  Robertson  as  having  in  his  Christianity  and  My¬ 
thology  (1900)  given  the  first  thoroughly  reasoned  exposition 
of  the  legendary  theory  *  also  Emilio  Bossi  in  Italy,  who 

1  \o>^6  (~'^sius'my^e  '  verbesserte  und  erweitezte  Ausgabe,  Jena, 


14 


210  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


wrote  Jesu  Christo  non  e  mai  esistito,  and  similar  authors 
in  Holland,  Poland,  and  other  countries,  including  W. 
Benjamin  Smith,  the  American  author  of  The  Pre-christian 
Jesus  (1906),  and  P.  Jensen  in  Das  Gilgamesch  Epos  in  den 
Welt-literatur  (1906),  who  makes  the  Jesus-story  a  variant  of 
the  Babylonian  epic,  2000  B.c.  A  pretty  strong  list ! 1  “  But/’ 
continues  Drews,  “  ordinary  historians  still  ignore  all  this.” 
Finally,  he  dismisses  Jesus  as  “  a  figure  swimming  obscurely 
in  the  mists  of  tradition.”  Nevertheless  I  need  hardly 
remark  that,  large  and  learned  as  the  body  of  opinion  here 
represented  is,  a  still  larger  (but  less  learned)  body  fights 
desperately  for  the  actual  historicity  of  Jesus,  and  some 
even  still  for  the  old  view  of  him  as  a  quite  unique  and 
miraculous  revelation  of  Godhood  on  earth. 

At  first,  no  doubt,  the  legendary  theory  seems  a  little 
too  far-fetched.  There  is  a  fashion  in  all  these  things, 
and  it  may  be  that  there  is  a  fashion  even  here.  But  when 
you  reflect  how  rapidly  legends  grow  up  even  in  these  days 
of  exact  Science  and  an  omniscient  Press  ;  how  the  figure 
of  Shakespeare,  dead  only  300  years,  is  almost  completely 
lost  in  the  mist  of  Time,  and  even  the  authenticity  of  his 
works  has  become  a  subject  of  controversy  ;  when  you 
find  that  William  Tell,  supposed  to  have  lived  some  300 
years  again  before  Shakespeare,  and  whose  deeds  in  minutest 
detail  have  been  recited  and  honoured  all  over  Europe, 
is  almost  certainly  a  pure  invention,  and  never  existed  ; 
when  you  remember — as  mentioned  earlier  in  this  book  2 3 — 
that  it  was  more  than  five  hundred  years  after  the  supposed 
birth  of  Jesus  before  any  serious  effort  was  made  to  establish 
the  date  of  that  birth — and  that  then  a  purely  mythical 
date  was  chosen  :  the  25th  December,  the  day  of  the  Sun  s 
new  birth  after  the  winter  solstice,  and  the  time  of  the 
supposed  birth  of  Apollo,  Bacchus,  and  the  other  Sungods ; 

1  To  which  we  may  also  add  Schweitzer’s  Quest  of  the  historical 

Jesus  (1910). 

3  Ch.  II,  supra. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  211 


when,  moreover,  you  think  for  a  moment  what  the  state 
of  historical  criticism  must  have  been,  and  the  general 
standard  of  credibility,  1,900  years  ago,  in  a  country  like 
Syria,  and  among  an  ignorant  population,  where  any 
story  circulating  from  lip  to  lip  was  assured  of  credence 
if  sufficiently  marvelous  or  imaginative  ; — why,  then  the 
legendary  theory  does  not  seem  so  improbable.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  after  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  (in  a.d. 
70),  little  groups  of  believers  in  a  redeeming  ‘  Christ  ’  were 
formed  there  and  in  other  places,  just  as  there  had  certainly 
existed,  in  the  first  century  b.c.,  groups  of  Gnostics,  Thera- 
peutae,  Essenes  and  others  whose  teachings  were  very 
similar  to  the  Christian,  and  there  was  now  a  demand  from 
many  of  those  groups  for  *  writings  '  and  ‘  histories  ’  which 
should  hearten  and  confirm  the  young  and  growing  Churches. 
The  Gospels  and  Epistles,  of  which  there  are  still  extant  a 
great  abundance,  both  apocryphal  and  canonical,  met  this 
demand  ;  but  how  far  their  records  of  the  person  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  are  reliable  history,  or  how  far  they  are  merely 
imaginative  pictures  of  the  kind  of  man  the  Saviour  might 
be  expected  to  be,1  is  a  question  which,  as  I  have  already 
said,  is  a  difficult  one  for  skilled  critics  to  answer,  and  one 
on  which  I  certainly  have  no  intention  of  giving  a  positive 
verdict.  Personally  I  must  say  I  think  the  ‘  legendary  ’ 
solution  quite  likely,  and  in  some  ways  more  satisfactory 
than  the  opposite  one — for  the  simple  reason  that  it  seems 
much  more  encouraging  to  suppose  that  the  story  of  Jesus, 
(gracious  and  beautiful  as  it  is)  is  a  myth  which  gradually 
formed  itself  in  the  conscience  of  mankind,  and  thus  points 
the  way  of  humanity’s  future  evolution,  than  to  suppose 
it  to  be  the  mere  record  of  an  unique  and  miraculous  inter¬ 
position  of  Providence,  which  depended  entirely  on  the 
powers  above,  and  could  hardly  be  expected  to  occur  again 

1  One  of  Celsus’  accusations  against  the  Christians  was  that  their 
Gospels  had  been  written  “  several  times  over  ”  (see  Origen,  Contra 
Celsunt,  ii.  26,  27). 


212  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


However,  the  question  is  not  what  we  desire,  but  what 
we  can  prove  to  be  the  actual  fact.  And  certainly  the  diffi¬ 
culties  in  the  way  of  regarding  the  Gospel  story  (or  stories, 
for  there  is  not  one  consistent  story)  as  true  are  enormous. 
If  anyone  will  read,  for  instance,  in  the  four  Gospels,  the 
events  of  the  night  preceding  the  crucifixion  and  reckon  the 
time  which  they  would  necessarily  have  taken  to  enact — 
the  Last  Supper,  the  agony  in  the  Garden,  the  betrayal 
by  Judas,  the  haling  before  Caiaphas  and  the  Sanhedrin, 
and  then  before  Pilate  in  the  Hall  of  Judgment  (though 
courts  for  the  trial  of  malefactors  do  not  generally  sit  in 
the  middle  of  the  night)  ;  then — in  Luke — the  interposed 
visit  to  Herod,  and  the  return  to  Pilate  ;  Pilate’s  speeches 
and  washing  of  hands  before  the  crowd ;  then  the  scourging 
and  the  mocking  and  the  arraying  of  Jesus  in  purple  robe 
as  a  king  ;  then  the  preparation  of  a  Cross  and  the  long 
and  painful  journey  to  Golgotha  ;  and  finally  the  Crucifixion 
at  sunrise  ; — he  will  see — as  has  often  been  pointed  out — 
that  the  whole  story  is  physically  impossible.  As  a  record 
of  actual  events  the  story  is  impossible  ;  but  as  a  record 
or  series  of  notes  derived  from  the  witnessing  of  a  “  mystery- 
play  ” — and  such  plays  with  very  similar  incidents  were 
common  enough  in  antiquity  in  connexion  with  cults  of 
a  dying  Saviour,  it  very  likely  is  true  (one  can  see  the  very 
dramatic  character  of  the  incidents  :  the  washing  of  hands, 
the  threefold  denial  by  Peter,  the  purple  robe  and  crown 
of  thorns,  and  so  forth)  ;  and  as  such  it  is  now  accepted 
by  many  well-qualified  authorities.1 

1  Dr.  Frazer  in  The  Golden  Bough  (vol.  ix,  “  The  Scapegoat,’ 
p.  400)  speaks  of  the  frequency  in  antiquity  of  a  Mystery-play  relating 
to  a  God-man  who  gives  his  life  and  blood  for  the  people  ;  and  he 
puts  forward  tentatively  and  by  no  means  dogmatically  the  following 
note  : — “  Such  a  drama,  if  we  are  right,  was  the  original  story  of 
Esther  and  Mordecai,  or  (to  give  their  older  names)  Ishtar  and  Marduk. 
It  was  played  in  Babylonia,  and  from  Babylonia  the  returning 
Captives  brought  it  to  Judaea,  where  it  was  acted,  rather  as  an  his¬ 
torical  than  a  mythical  piece,  by  players  who,  having  to  die  in  grim 
earnest  on  a  cross  or  gallows,  were  naturally  drawn  from  the  gaol 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  213 


There  are  many  other  difficulties.  The  raising  of  Lazarus, 
already  dead  three  days,  the  turning  of  water  into  wine 
(a  miracle  attributed  to  Bacchus,  of  old),  the  feeding  of 
the  five  thousand,  and  others  of  the  marvels  are,  to  say 
the  least,  not  easy  of  digestion.  The  “  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  ”  which,  with  the  “  Lord’s  Prayer  ”  embedded  in 
it,  forms  the  great  and  accepted  repository  of  ‘  Christian  ’ 
teaching  and  piety,  is  well  known  to  be  a  collection  of 
sayings  from  pre-Christian  writings,  including  the  Psalms, 
Isaiah,  Ecclesiasticus,  the  Secrets  of  Enoch ,  the  Shemoneh- 
esreh  (a  book  of  Hebrew  prayers),  and  others  ;  and  the  fact 
that  this  collection  was  really  made  after  the  time  of  Jesus, 
and  could  not  have  originated  from  him,  is  clear  from  the 
stress  which  it  lays  on  “  persecutions  ”  and  "  false  prophets  ” 
— things  which  were  certainly  not  a  source  of  trouble  at 
the  time  Jesus  is  supposed  to  be  speaking,  though  they 
were  at  a  later  time — as  well  as  from  the  occurrence  of 
the  word  “  Gentiles,”  which  being  here  used  apparently 
in  contradistinction  to  "  Christians  ”  could  not  well  be 
appropriate  at  a  time  when  no  recognised  Christian  bodies 
as  yet  existed. 

But  the  most  remarkable  point  in  this  connexion  is  the 
absolute  silence  of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  on  the  subject  of 
the  Resurrection  and  Ascension — that  is,  of  the  original 
Gospel,  for  it  is  now  allowed  on  all  hands  that  the  twelve 
verses  Mark  xvi.  9  to  the  end,  are  a  later  insertion.  Con¬ 
sidering  the  nature  of  this  event,  astounding  indeed,  if 
physically  true,  and  unique  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
it  is  strange  that  this  Gospel — the  earliest  written  of  the 
four  Gospels,  and  nearest  in  time  to  the  actual  evidence — 

rather  than  the  green-room.  A  chain  of  causes,  which  because  we 
cannot  follow'  them  might — in  the  loose  language  of  common  life 
- — be  called  an  accident,  determined  that  the  part  of  the  dying  god 
in  this  annual  play  should  be  thrust  upon  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  whom 
the  enemies  he  had  made  in  high  places  by  his  outspoken  strictures 
were  resolved  to  put  out  of  the  way.”  See  also  vol.  iv,  “  The  Dying 
God,”  in  the  same  book. 


214  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


makes  no  mention  of  it.  The  next  Gospel  in  point  of  time 
— that  of  Matthew— mentions  the  matter  rather  briefly 
and  timidly,  and  reports  the  story  that  the  body  had  been 
stolen  from  the  sepulchre.  Luke  enlarges  considerably 
and  gives  a  whole  long  chapter  to  the  resurrection  and 
ascension  ;  while  the  Fourth  Gospel,  written  fully  twjsnty 
years  later  still — say  about  a.d.  120 — gives  two  chapters 
and  a  great  variety  of  details  ! 

This  increase  of  detail,  however,  as  one  gets  farther 
and  farther  from  the  actual  event  is  just  what  one  always 
finds,  as  I  have  said  before,  in  legendary  traditions.  A 
very  interesting  example  of  this  has  lately  come  to  light 
in  the  case  of  the  traditions  concerning  the  life  and  death 
of  the  Persian  Bab.  The  Bab,  as  most  of  my  readers  will 
know,  was  the  Founder  of  a  great  religious  movement 
which  now  numbers  (or  numbered  before  the  Great  War) 
some  millions  of  adherents,  chiefly  Mahommedans,  Christ- 
ians,  Jews  and  Parsees.  The  period  of  his  missionary 
activity  was  from  1845  to  1850.  His  Gospel  was  singularly 
like  that  of  Jesus — a  gospel  of  love  to  mankind — only  (as 
might  be  expected  from  the  difference  of  date)  with  an 
even  wider  and  more  deliberate  inclusion  of  all  classes, 
creeds  and  races,  sinners  and  saints  ;  and  the  incidents 
and  entourage  of  his  ministry  were  also  singularly  similar. 
He  was  born  at  Shiraz  in  1820,  and  growing  up  a  promising 
boy  and  youth,  fell  at  the  age  of  21  under  the  influence 
of  a  certain  Seyyid  Kazim,  leader  of  a  heterodox  sect,  and 
a  kind  of  fore-runner  or  John  the  Baptist  to  the  Bab.  The 
result  was  a  period  of  mental  trouble  (like  the  “  tempta¬ 
tion  in  the  wilderness  ”),  after  which  the  youth  returned 
to  Shiraz  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  began  his  own  mission. 
His  real  name  was  Mirza  Ali  Muhammad,  but  he  called 
himself  thenceforth  The  Bdh,  i.e.  the  Gate  ("  I  am  the 
Way  *')  ;  and  gradually  there  gathered  round  him  disciples, 
drawn  by  the  fascination  of  his  personality  and  the  devo¬ 
tion  of  his  character.  But  with  the  rapid  increase  of  his 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


215 


following  great  jealousy  and  hatred  were  excited  among 
the  Mullahs,  the  upholders  of  a  fanatical  and  narrow¬ 
minded  Mahommedanism  and  quite  corresponding  to  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees  of  the  New  Testament.  By  them 
he  was  denounced  to  the  Turkish  Government.  He  was 
arrested  on  a  charge  of  causing  political  disturbance,  and 
was  condemned  to  death.  Among  his  disciples  was  one 
favourite,1  who  was  absolutely  devoted  to  his  Master  and 
refused  to  leave  him  at  the  last.  So  together  they  were 
suspended  over  the  city  wall  (at  Tabriz)  and  simultaneously 
shot.  This  was  on  the  8th  July,  1850. 

In  November  1850 — or  between  that  date  and  October 
1851,  a  book  appeared,  written  by  one  of  the  Bab’s  earliest 
and  most  enthusiastic  disciples— a  merchant  of  Kasha n — 
and  giving  in  quite  simple  and  unpretending  form  a  record 
of  the  above  events.  There  is  in  it  no  account  of  miracles 
or  of  great  pretensions  to  godhood  and  the  like.  It  is  just 
a  plain  history  of  the  life  and  death  of  a  beloved  teacher.  It 
was  cordially  received  and  circulated  far  and  wide  ;  and 
we  have  no  reason  for  doubting  its  essential  veracity. 
And  even  if  proved  now  to  be  inaccurate  in  one  or  two 
details,  this  would  not  invalidate  the  moral  of  the  rest  of 
the  story — which  is  as  follows  : 

After  the  death  of  the  Bab  a  great  persecution  took 
place  (in  1852)  ;  there  were  many  Babi  martyrs,  and  for 
some  years  the  general  followers  were  scattered.  But  in 
time  they  gathered  themselves  together  again;  successors 
to  the  original  prophet  were  appointed — though  not  without 
dissensions — and  a  Babi  church,  chiefly  at  Acca  or  Acre 
in  Syria,  began  to  be  formed.  It  was  during  this  period 
that  a  great  number  of  legends  grew  up — legends  of  miracu¬ 
lous  babyhood  and  boyhood,  legends  of  miracles  performed 
by  the  mature  Bab,  and  so  forth  ;  and  when  the  newly- 
forming  Church  came  to  look  into  the  matter  it  concluded 

1  Mirza  Muhammad  Ali ;  and  one  should  note  the  similarity  of 
the  two  names. 


216  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

(quite  naturally!)  that  such  a  simple  history  as  I  have 
outlined  above  would  never  do  for  the  foundation  of  its 
plans,  now  grown  somewhat  ambitious.  So  a  new  Gospel 
was  framed,  called  the  Tarikh-i-Jadid  ("  The  new  History  ” 
or  The  new  Way  ),  embodying  and  including  a  lot  of 
legendary  matter,  and  issued  with  the  authority  of  “  the 
Church.  I  his  was  in  1881-2  ;  and  comparing  this  with 
the  original  record  (called  The  point  of  Kaf)  we  get  a 
luminous  view  of  the  growth  of  fable  in  those  thirty  brief 
years  which  had  elapsed  since  the  Bab’s  death.  Meanwhile 
it  became  very  necessary  of  course  to  withdraw  from  circu¬ 
lation  as  far  as  possible  all  copies  of  the  original  record, 
lest  they  should  give  the  lie  to  the  later  ‘  Gospel  ’  ;  and 
this  apparently  was  done  very  effectively — so  effectively 
indeed  that  Professor  Edward  Browne  (to  whom  the  w^orld 
owes  so  much  on  account  of  his  labours  in  connexion  with 
Babism),  after  arduous  search,  came  at  one  time  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  original  was  no  longer  extant.  Most 
fortunately,  however,  the  well-known  Comte  de  Gobineau 
had  in  the  course  of  his  studies  on  Eastern  Religions  acquired 
a  copy  of  7  he  point  of  Kaf ;  and  this,  after  his  death, 
was  found  among  his  literary  treasures  and  identified  (as 
was  most  fitting)  by  Professor  Browne  himself. 

Such  in  brief  is  the  history  of  the  early  Babi  Church  1 
—a  Church  which  has  grown  up  and  expanded  greatly 
within  the  memory  of  many  yet  living.  Much  might  be 
written  about  it,  but  the  chief  point  at  present  is  for  us 
to  note  the  well-verified  and  interesting  example  it  gives 
of  the  rapid  growth  in  Syria  of  a  religious  legend  and  the 
reasons  which  contributed  to  this  growth — and  to  be  warned 
how  much  more  rapidly  similar  legends  probably  grew  up 
in  the  same  land  in  the  middle  of  the  First  Century,  a.d. 

Koi  literature,  see  Edward  G.  Browne’s  Traveller' s  N arrative 
on  the  Episode  of  the  Bah  (1891),  and  his  New  History  of  the  Bab  trans¬ 
lated  from  the  Persian  of  the  Tarikh-i-Jadid  (Cambridge,  1893).  Also 
Sermons  and  Essays  by  Herbert  Rix  (Williams  and  Norgate  1907) 
PP-  295-325.  “  The  Persian  Bab.” 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  217 


The  story  of  the  Bab  is  also  interesting  to  us  because,  while 
this  mass  of  legend  was  formed  around  it,  there  is  no  possible 
doubt  about  the  actual  existence  of  a  historical  nucleus 
in  the  person  of  Mirza  Ali  Muhammad. 

On  the  wrhole,  one  is  sometimes  inclined  to  doubt  whether 
any  great  movement  ever  makes  itself  felt  in  the  world, 
without  dating  first  from  some  powerful  personality  or 
group  of  personalities,  round  which  the  idealising  and  myth¬ 
making  genius  of  mankind  tends  to  crystallize.  But  one 
must  not  even  here  be  too  certain.  Something  of  the 
Apostle  Paul  we  know,  and  something  of  ‘  John 5  the 
Evangelist  and  writer  of  the  Epistle  i  John  ;  and  that 
the  *  Christian  ’  doctrines  dated  largely  from  the  preaching 
and  teaching  of  these  two  we  cannot  doubt ;  but  Paul 
never  saw  Jesus  (except  “  in  the  Spirit  ”),  nor  does  he  ever 
mention  the  maiTpiemonally,  or~air\nmcI3^iT~of  hislictual 
life  (the  “  crucified  Christ  ^Eemjg  always  an  ideal  figure)  ; 
and  ‘  John  ’  who  wrote  the  Gospel  was  certainly  not  the 
same  as  the  disciple  who  “  lay  in  Jesus’  bosom  ” — though 
an  intercalated  verse,  the  last  but  one  in  the  Gospel,  asserts 
the  identity.1 

There  may  have  been  a  historic  Jesus — and  if  so,  to  get 
a  reliable  outline  of  his  life  would  indeed  be  a  treasure  ; 
but  at  present  it  would  seem  there  is  no  sign  of  that.  If 
the  historicity  of  Jesus,  in  any  degree,  could  be  proved, 
it  would  give  us  reason  for  supposing — what  I  have  person¬ 
ally  always  been  inclined  to  believe — that  there  was  also 
a  historical  nucleus  for  such  personages  as  Osiris,  Mithra, 
Krishna,  Hercules,  Apollo  and  the  rest.  The  question, 
in  fact,  narrows'  itself  down  to  this,  Have  there  been  in 
the  course  of  human  evolution  certain,  so  to  speak,  nodal 
points  or  periods  at  which  the  psychologic  currents  ran 
together  and  condensed  themselves  for  a  new  start  ;  and 

1  It  is  obvious,  in  fact,  that  the  whole  of  the  last  chapter  of  St. 
John  is  a  later  insertion,  and  again  that  the  two  last  verses  of  that 
chapter  are  later  than  the  chapter  itself  ! 


218  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


has  each  such  node  or  point  of  condensation  been  marked 
by  the  appearance  of  an  actual  and  heroic  man  (or  woman) 
who  supplied  a  necessary  impetus  for  the  new  departure, 
and  gave  his  name  to  the  resulting  movement  ?  or  is  it 
sufficient  to  suppose  the  automatic  formation  of  such  nodes 
or  starting-points  without  the  intervention  of  any  special 
hero  or  genius,  and  to  imagine  that  in  each  case  the  myth¬ 
making  tendency  of  mankind  created  a  legendary  and 
inspiring  figure  and  worshiped  the  same  for  a  long  period 
afterwards  as  a  god  ? 

As  I  have  said  before,  this  is  a  question  which,  interesting 
as  it  is,  is  not  really  very  important.  The  main  thing  being 
that  the  prophetic  and  creative  spirit  of  mankind  has  from 
time  to  time  evolved  those  figures  as  idealisations  of  its 
“  heart's  desire  ”  and  placed  a  halo  round  their  heads. 
The  long  procession  of  them  becomes  a  real  piece  of  History 
- — the  history  of  the  evolution  of  the  human  heart,  and  of 
human  consciousness.  But  with  the  psychology  of  the 
whole  subject  I  shall  deal  in  the  next  chapter. 

I  may  here,  however,  dwell  for  a  moment  on  two  other 
points  which  belong  properly  to  this  chapter.  I  have 
already  mentioned  the  great  reliance  placed  by  the  advocates 
of  a  unique  ‘  revelation  '  on  the  high  morality  taught  in  the 
Gospels  and  the  New  Testament  generally.  There  is  no 
need  of  course  to  challenge  that  morality  or  to  depreciate 
it  unduly  ;  but  the  argument  assumes  that  it  is  so  greatly 
superior  to  anything  of  the  kind  that  had  been  taught 
before  that  we  are  compelled  to  suppose  something  like  a 
revelation  to  explain  its  appearance — whereas  of  course 
anyone  familiar  with  the  writings  of  antiquity,  among  the 
Greeks  or  Romans  or  Egyptians  or  Hindus  or  later  Jews, 
knows  perfectly  well  that  the  reported  sayings  of  Jesus 
and  the  Apostles  may  be  paralleled  abundantlv  from  these 
sources.  I  have  illustrated  this  already  from  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  If  anyone  will  glance  at  the  Testament  of 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


219 


the  Twelve  Patriarchs — a  Jewish  book  composed  about 
120  B.c. — he  will  see  that  it  is  full  of  moral  precepts,  and 
especially  precepts  of  love  and  forgiveness,  so  ardent  and 
so  noble  that  it  hardly  suffers  in  any  way  when  compared 
with  the  New  Testament  teaching,  and  that  consequently 
no  special  miracle  is  required  to  explain  the  appearance 
of  the  latter. 

The  twelve  Patriarchs  in  question  are  the  twelve  sons 
of  Jacob,  and  the  book  consists  of  their  supposed  death¬ 
bed  scenes,  in  which  each  patriarch  in  turn  recites  his  own 
(more  or  less  imaginary)  life  and  deeds  and  gives  pious 
counsel  to  his  children  and  successors.  It  is  composed  in 
a  fine  and  poetic  style,  and  is  full  of  loftyr  thought,  remind¬ 
ful  in  scores  of  passages  of  the  Gospels — words  and  all — 
the  coincidences  being  too  striking  to  be  accidental.  It 
evidently  had  a  deep  influence  on  the  authors  of  the  Gospels, 
as  well  as  on  St.  Paul.  It  affirms  a  belief  in  the  coming  of 
a  Messiah,  and  in  salvation  for  the  Gentiles.  The  following 
are  some  quotations  from  it  :  1  Testament  of  Zebulun 
(p.  ii6)  :  “  My  children,  I  bid  you  keep  the  commands  of 
the  Lord,  and  show  mercy  to  your  neighbours,  and  have 
compassion  towards  all,  not  towards  men  only,  but  also 
towards  beasts."  Dan  (p.  127)  :  “  Love  the  Lord  through 
all  your  life,  and  one  another  with  a  true  heart."  Joseph 
(p.  173)  :  “  I  was  sick,  and  the  Lord  visited  me  ;  in  prison, 
and  my  God  showed  favor  unto  me."  Benjamin  (p.  209)  : 
“  For  as  the  sun  is  not  defiled  by  shining  on  dung  and  mire, 
but  rather  drieth  up  both  and  driveth  away  the  evil 
smell,  so  also  the  pure  mind,  encompassed  by  the  defile¬ 
ments  of  earth,  rather  cleanseth  them  and  is  not  itself 
defiled." 

I  think  these  quotations  are  sufficient  to  prove  the  high 
standard  of  this  book,  which  was  written  in  the  Second 
Century  b.c.,  and  from  which  the  New  Testament  authors 
copiously  borrowed. 

1  The  references  being  to  the  Edition  by  R.  H.  Charles  (1907). 


220  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


The  other  point  has  to  do  with  my  statement  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter  that  two  of  the  main  ‘  charac¬ 
teristics  ’  of  Christianity  were  its  insistence  on  (a)  a  tendency 
towards  renunciation  of  the  world,  and  a  consequent  culti¬ 
vation  of  a  purely  spiritual  love,  and  (b)  on  a  morality 
whose  inspiration  was  a  private  sense  of  duty  to  God  rather 
than  a  public  sense  of  duty  to  one's  neighbour  and  to  society 
generally.  I  think,  however,  that  the  last-mentioned 
characteristic  ought  to  be  viewed  in  relation  to  a  third, 
namely,  (c)  the  extraordinarily  democratic  tendency  of 
the  new  Religion.1  Celsus  (a.d.  200)  jeered  at  the  early 
Christians  for  their  extreme  democracy  :  “It  is  only  the 
simpletons,  the  ignoble,  the  senseless — slaves  and  womenfolk 
and  children — whom  they  wish  to  persuade  [to  join  their 
churches]  or  can  persuade  ” — “  wool-dressers  and  cobblers 
and  fullers,  the  most  uneducated  and  vulgar  persons,” 
and  “  whosoever  is  a  sinner,  or  unintelligent  or  a  fool,  in 
a  word,  whoever  is  god-forsaken  {icaKoScti [icov) ,  him  the 
Kingdom  of  God  will  receive.”2  Thus  Celsus,  the  accom¬ 
plished,  clever,  philosophic  and  withal  humorous  critic, 
laughed  at  the  new  religionists,  and  prophesied  their  speedy 
extinction.  Nevertheless  he  was  mistaken.  There  is  little 
doubt  that  just  the  inclusion  of  women  and  weaklings 
and  outcasts  did  contribute  largely  to  the  spread  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  (and  Mithraism).  It  brought  hope  and  a  sense  of 
human  dignity  to  the  despised  and  rejected  of  the  earth. 
Of  the  immense  numbers  of  lesser  officials  who  carried  on 
the  vast  organisation  of  the  Roman  Empire,  most  perhaps, 
were  taken  from  the  ranks  of  the  freedmen  and  quondam 
slaves,  drawn  from  a  great  variety  of  races  and  already 

1  It  is  important  to  note,  however,  that  this  same  democratic 
tendency  was  very  marked  in  Mithraism.  “  I]  est  certain,”  says  Cumont, 

qu  il  a  fait  ses  premieres  conquetes  dans  les  classes  inferieures  de 
la  soci6t6,  et  c’est  l’a  un  fait  considerable  ;  le  mithracisme  est  rest6 
longtemps  la  religion  des  humbles.”  My  sieves  de  Mithra,  p.  68. 

2  See  Glover's  Conflict  of  Religions  in  the  early  Roman  Empire, 
ch.  viii. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  221 


familiar  with  pagan  cults  of  all  kinds — Egyptian,  Syrian, 
Chaldean,  Iranian,  and  so  forth.1  This  fact  helped  to  give 
to  Christianity — under  the  fine  tolerance  of  the  Empire — 
its  democratic  character  and  also  its  willingness  to  accept 
all.  The  rude  and  menial  masses,  who  had  hitherto  been 
almost  beneath  the  notice  of  Greek  and  Roman  culture, 
flocked  in  ;  and  though  this  was  doubtless,  as  time  went 
on,  a  source  of  weakness  to  the  Church,  and  a  cause  of 
dissension  and  superstition,  yet  it  was  in  the  inevitable 
fine  of  human  evolution,  and  had  a  psychological  basis 
which  I  must  now  endeavour  to  explain. 


1  See  Toutain,  Cultes  pa'iens,  vol.  ii,  conclusion. 


XIV 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 

The  general  drift  and  meaning  of  the  present  book  must 
now,  I  think,  from  many  hints  scattered  in  the  course  of 
it,  be  growing  clear.  But  it  will  be  well  perhaps  in  this 
chapter,  at  the  risk  of  some  repetition,  to  bring  the  whole 
argument  together.  And  the  argument  is  that  since  the 
dawn  of  humanity  on  the  earth — many  hundreds  of  thou¬ 
sands  or  perhaps  a  million  years  ago — there  has  been  a  slow 
psychologic  evolution,  a  gradual  development  or  refinement 
of  Consciousness,  which  at  a  certain  stage  has  spontaneously 
given  birth  in  the  human  race  to  the  phenomena  of  religious 
belief  and  religious  ritual — these  phenomena  (whether  in 
the  race  at  large  or  in  any  branch  of  it)  always  following, 
step  by  step,  a  certain  order  depending  on  the  degrees 
of  psychologic  evolution  concerned ;  and  that  it  is  this 
general  fact  which  accounts  for  the  strange  similarities  of 
belief  and  ritual  which  have  been  observed  all  over  the 
world  and  in  places  far  remote  from  each  other,  and  which 
have  been  briefly  noted  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

And  the  main  stages  of  this  psychologic  evolution — 
those  at  any  rate  with  which  we  are  here  concerned — are 
Three  :  the  stage  of  Simple  Consciousness,  the  stage  of 
Self-consciousness,  and  a  third  Stage  which  for  want  of 
a  better  word  we  may  term  the  stage  of  Universal  Conscious¬ 
ness.  Of  course  these  three  stages  may  at  some  future 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


223 


time  be  analysed  into  lesser  degrees,  with  useful  result— 
but  at  present  I  only  desire  to  draw  attention  to  them  in 
the  rough,  so  to  speak,  to  show  that  it  is  from  them  and 
from  their  passage  one  into  another  that  there  has  flowed 
by  a  perfectly  natural  logic  and  concatenation  the  strange 
panorama  of  humanity’s  religious  evolution — its  super¬ 
stitions  and  magic  and  sacrifices  and  dancings  and  ritual 
generally,  and  later  its  incantations  and  prophecies,  and 
services  of  speech  and  verse,  and  paintings  and  forms  of 
art,  and  figures  of  the  gods.  A  wonderful  Panorama  indeed, 
or  poem  of  the  Centuries,  or,  if  you  like.  World-symphony 
with  three  great  leading  motives  ! 

And  first  we  have  the  stage  of  Simple  Consciousness. 
For  hundreds  of  centuries  (we  cannot  doubt)  Man  possessed 
a  degree  of  consciousness  not  radically  different  from  that 
of  the  higher  Animals,  though  probably  more  quick  and 
varied.  He  saw,  he  heard,  he  felt,  he  noted.  He  acted 
or  reacted,  quickly  or  slowly,  in  response  to  these  impressions. 
But  the  consciousness  of  him  self,  as  a  being  separate  from 
his  impressions,  as  separate  from  his  surroundings,  had 
not  yet  arisen  or  taken  hold  on  him.  He  was  an  instinctive 
part  of  Nature.  And  in  this  respect  he  was  very  near  to 
the  Animals.  Self-consciousness  in  the  animals,  in  a 
germinal  form  is  there,  no  doubt,  but  embedded,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  general  world  consciousness.  It  is  on  this  account 
that  the  animals  have  such  a  marvellously  acute  perception 
and  instinct,  being  embedded  in  Nature.  And  primitive 
Man  had  the  same.  Also  we  must,  as  I  have  said  before, 
allow  that  man  in  that  stage  must  have  had  the  same  sort 
of  grace  and  perfection  of  form  and  movement  as  we  admire 
in  the  (wild)  animals  now.  It  would  be  quite  unreasonable 
to  suppose  that  he,  the  crown  in  some  sense  of  creation, 
was  from  the  beginning  a  lame  and  ill-made  abortion.  For 
a  long  long  period  the  tribes  of  men,  like  the  tribes  of  the 
higher  animals,  must  have  been  (on  the  whole,  and  allowing 


224  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


for  occasional  privations  and  sufferings  and  conflicts) 
well  adapted  to  their  surroundings  and  harmonious  with 
the  earth  and  with  each  other.  There  must  have  been 
a  period  resembling  a  Golden  Age — some  condition  at  any 
rate  which,  compared  with  subsequent  miseries,  merited 
the  epithet  ‘  golden/ 

It  was  during  this  period  apparently  that  the  system 
of  Totems  arose.  The  tribes  felt  their  relationship  to  their 
winged  and  fourfooted  mates  (including  also  other  objects 
of  nature)  so  deeply  and  intensely  that  they  adopted  the 
latter  as  their  emblems.  The  pre-civilisation  Man  fairly 
worshiped  the  animals  and  was  proud  to  be  called  after 
them.  Of  course  we  moderns  find  this  strange.  We, 
whose  conceptions  of  these  beautiful  creatures  are  mostly 
derived  from  a  broken-down  cab-horse,  or  a  melancholy 
milk-rummaged  cow  in  a  sooty  field,  or  a  diseased  and 
despondent  lion  or  eagle  at  the  Zoo,  have  never  even  seen 
or  loved  them  and  have  only  wondered  with  our  true  com¬ 
mercial  instinct  what  profit  we  could  extract  from  them. 
But  they,  the  primitives,  loved  and  admired  the  animals  ; 
they  domesticated  many  of  them  by  the  force  of  a  natural 
friendship,1  and  accorded  them  a  kind  of  divinity.  This 
was  the  age  of  tribal  solidarity  and  of  a  latent  sense  of 
solidarity  with  Nature.  And  the  point  of  it  all  is  (with 
regard  to  the  subject  we  have  in  hand)  that  this  was  also 
the  age  from  which  by  a  natural  evolution  the  sense  of 
Religion  came  to  mankind.  If  Religion  in  man  is  the  sense 
of  ties  binding  his  inner  self  to  the  powers  of  the  universe 
around  him,  then  it  is  evident  I  think  that  primitive  man 
as  I  have  described  him  possessed  the  reality  of  this  sense 
— though  so  far  buried  and  subconscious  that  he  was  hardly 
aware  of  it.  It  was  only  later,  and  with  the  coming  of 

1  See  ch.  iv,  supra.  Tylor  in  his  Primitive  Culture  (vol.  i,  p.  469, 
edn.  1903)  says  :  “  The  sense  of  an  absolute  psychical  distinction 

between  man  and  beast,  so  prevalent  in  the  civilised  world,  is  hardly 
to  be  found  among  the  lower  races." 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


225 


the  Second  Stage,  that  this  sense  began  to  rise  distinctly 
into  consciousness. 

Let  us  pass  then  to  the  Second  Stage.  There  is  a  moment 
in  the  evolution  of  a  child — somewhere  perhaps  about  the 
age  of  three  1 — when  the  simple  almost  animal-like  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  babe  is  troubled  by  a  new  element — self- 
consciousness.  The  change  is  so  marked,  so  definite,  that 
(in  the  depth  of  the  infant’s  eyes)  you  can  almost  see  it  take 
place.  So  in  the  evolution  of  the  human  race  there  has 
been  a  period — also  marked  and  definite,  though  extending 
intermittent  over  a  vast  interval  of  time — when  on  men 
in  general  there  dawned  the  consciousness  of  themselves, 
of  their  own  thoughts  and  actions.  The  old  simple  accept¬ 
ance  of  sensations  and  experiences  gave  place  to  reflection . 
The  question  arose  :  “  How  do  these  sensations  and  ex¬ 
periences  affect  me  ?  What  can  /  do  to  modify  them,  to 
encourage  the  pleasurable,  to  avoid  or  inhibit  the  painful, 
and  so  on  ?  ”  From  that  moment  a  new  motive  was  added 
to  life.  The  mind  revolved  round  a  new  centre.  It  began 
to  spin  like  a  little  eddy  round  its  own  axis.  It  studied 
itself  first  and  became  deeply  concerned  about  its  own 
pleasures  and  pains,  losing  touch  the  while  with  the  larger 
life  which  once  dominated  it — the  life  of  Nature,  the  life 
of  the  Tribe.  The  old  unity  of  the  spirit,  the  old  solidarity, 
were  broken  up. 

I  have  touched  on  this  subject  before,  but  it  is  so  important 
that  the  reader  must  excuse  repetition.  There  came  an 
inevitable  severance,  an  inevitable  period  of  strife.  The 
magic  mirror  of  the  soul,  reflecting  nature  as  heretofore 
in  calm  and  simple  grace,  was  suddenly  cracked  across. 
The  new  self-conscious  man  (not  all  at  once  but  gradually) 
became  alienated  from  his  tribe.  He  lapsed  into  strife 
with  his  fellows.  Ambition,  vanity,  greed,  the  love  of 

1  See  Bucke’s  Cosmic  Consciousness  (Philadelphia,  1901),  pp.  11 
and  39 ;  also  W.  McDougairs  Social  Psychology  (1908),  p.  146 — 
where  the  same  age  is  tentatively  suggested. 

15 


226  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


domination,  the  desire  for  property  and  possessions,  set 
in.  The  influences  of  fellowship  and  solidarity  grew  feebler. 
He  became  alienated  from  his  great  Mother.  His  instincts 
were  less  and  less  sure— and  that  in  proportion  as  brain- 
activity  and  self-regarding  calculation  took  their  place. 
Love  and  mutual  help  were  less  compelling  in  proportion  as 
the  demands  of  self-interest  grew  louder  and  more  insistent. 
Ultimately  the  crisis  came.  Cain  murdered  his  brother 
and  became  an  outcast.  The  Garden  of  Eden  and  the 
Golden  Age  closed  their  gates  behind  him.  He  entered 
upon  a  period  of  suffering — a  period  of  labour  and  toil 
and  sorrow  such  as  he  had  never  before  known,  and  such 
as  the  animals  certainly  have  never  known.  And  in  that 
distressful  state,  in  that  doleful  valley  of  his  long  pilgrimage, 
he  still  remains  to-day 

Thus  has  the  canker  of  self-consciousness  done  its  work. 
It  would  be  foolish  and  useless  to  rail  against  the  process, 
or  to  blame  any  one  for  it.  It  had  to  be.  Through  this 
dismal  vale  of  self-seeking  mankind  had  to  pass — if  only 
in  order  at  last  to  find  the  True  Self  which  was  (and  still 
remains)  its  goal.  The  pilgrimage  will  not  last  for  ever. 
Indeed  there  are  signs  that  the  recent  Great  War  and  the 
following  Events  mark  the  lowest  point  of  descent  and  the 
beginning  of  the  human  soul’s  return  to  sanity  and  ascent 
towards  the  heavenly  Kingdom.  No  doubt  Man  will 
arrive  again  some  day  at  the  grace,  composure  and  leisurely 
beauty  of  life  which  the  animals  realised  long  ago,  though 
he  seems  a  precious  long  time  about  it  ;  and  when  all  this 
nightmare  of  Greed  and  Vanity  and  Self-conceit  and  Cruelty 
will  come  again  to  its  Golden  Age  and  to  that  Paradise  of 
and  Lust  of  oppression  and  domination,  which  marks  the 
present  period,  is  past — and  it  will  pass — then  Humanity 
redemption  and  peace  which  has  for  so  long  been  prophesied. 

But  we  are  dealing  with  the  origins  of  Religion  ;  and 
what  I  want  the  reader  to  see  is  that  it  was  just  this  breaking 
up  of  the  old  psychologic  unity  and  continuity  of  man  with 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


227 


his  surroundings  which  led  to  the  whole  panorama  of  the 
rituals  and  creeds.  Man,  centering  round  himself,  necessarily 
became  an  exile  from  the  great  Whole.  He  committed  the 
sin  (if  it  was  a  sin)  of  Separation.  Anyhow  Nemesis  was 
swift.  The  sense  of  loneliness  and  the  sense  of  guilt  came 
on  him.  Ihe  realisation  of  himself  as  a  separate  conscious 
being  necessarily  led  to  his  attributing  a  similar  conscious¬ 
ness  of  some  kind  to  the  great  Life  around  him.  Action 
and  reaction  are  equal  and  opposite.  Whatever  he  may 
have  felt  before,  it  became  clear  to  him  now  that  beings 
more  or  less  like  himself — though  doubtless  vaster  and 
more  powerful — moved  behind  the  veil  of  the  visible  world. 
From  that  moment  the  belief  in  Magic  and  Demons  and 
Gods  arose  or  slowly  developed  itself  ;  and  in  the  midst 
of  this  turmoil  of  perilous  and  conflicting  powers,  he  per¬ 
ceived  himself  an  alien  and  an  exile,  stricken  with  Fear, 
stricken  with  the  sense  of  Sin.  If  before,  he  had  exper¬ 
ienced  fear — in  the  kind  of  automatic  way  of  self-preservation 
in  which  the  animals  feel  it — he  now,  with  fevered  self- 
regard  and  excited  imagination,  experienced  it  in  double 
or  treble  degree.  And  if,  before,  he  had  been  aware  that 
fortune  and  chance  were  not  always  friendly  and  propitious 
to  his  designs,  he  now  perceived  or  thought  he  perceived 
in  every  adverse  happening  the  deliberate  persecution  of 
the  powrers,  and  an  accusation  of  guilt  directed  against 
him  for  some  neglect  or  deficiency  in  his  relation  to  them. 
Hence  by  a  perfectly  logical  and  natural  sequence  there 
arose  the  belief  in  other-world  or  supernatural  powers, 
whether  purely  fortuitous  and  magical  or  more  distinctly 
rational  and  personal ;  there  arose  the  sense  of  Sin,  or 
of  offence  against  these  powers  ;  there  arose  a  complex 
ritual  of  Expiation — whether  by  personal  sacrifice  and 
suffering  or  by  the  sacrifice  of  victims.  There  arose  too 
a  whole  catalogue  of  ceremonies — ceremonies  of  Initiation, 
by  which  the  novice  should  learn  to  keep  within  the  good 
grace  of  the  Powers,  and  under  the  blessing  of  his  Tribe 


228  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


and  the  protection  of  its  Totem  ;  ceremonies  of  Eucharistic 
meals  which  should  restore  the  lost  sanctity  of  the  common 
life  and  remove  the  sense  of  guilt  and  isolation  ;  ceremonies 
of  Marriage  and  rules  and  rites  of  sex-connexion,  fitted  to 
curb  the  terrific  and  demonic  violence  of  passions  which 
else  indeed  might  easily  rend  the  community  asunder. 
And  so  on.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  granted  an  early  stage 
of  simple  unreflecting  nature-consciousness,  and  granting 
this  broken  into  and,  after  a  time,  shattered  by  the  arrival 
of  self- consciousness  there  would  necessarily  follow  in 
spontaneous  yet  logical  order  a  whole  series  of  religious 
institutions  and  beliefs,  which  phantasmal  and  unreal 
as  they  may  appear  to  us,  were  by  no  means  unreal  to  our 
ancestors.  It  is  easy  also  to  see  that  as  the  psychological 
process  was  necessarily  of  similar  general  character  in  every 
branch  of  the  human  race  and  all  over  the  world,  so  the 
religious  evolutions — the  creeds  and  rituals — took  on  much 
the  same  complexion  everywhere  ;  and,  though  they  differed 
in  details  according  to  climate  and  other  influences,  ran 
on  such  remarkably  parallel  lines  as  we  have  noted. 

Finally,  to  make  the  whole  matter  clear,  let  me  repeat 
that  this  event,  the  inbreak  of  Self-consciousness,  took 
place,  or  began  to  take  place,  an  enormous  time  ago,  perhaps 
in  the  beginning  of  the  Neolithic  Age.  I  dwell  on  the  word 
“  began  ”  because  I  think  it  is  probable  that  in  its  beginnings, 
and  for  a  long  period  after,  this  newborn  consciousness 
had  an  infantile  and  very  innocent  character,  quite  different 
from  its  later  and  more  aggressive  forms — just  as  we  see 
self-consciousness  in  a  little  child  has  a  charm  and  a  grace 
which  it  loses  later  in  a  boastful  or  grasping  boyhood  and 
manhood.  So  we  may  understand  that  though  self- 
consciousness  may  have  begun  to  appear  in  the  human 
race  at  this  very  early  time  (and  more  or  less  contempor¬ 
aneously  with  the  invention  of  very  rude  tools  and  unformed 
language),  there  probably  did  elapse  a  very  long  period — 
perhaps  the  whole  of  the  Neolithic  Age — before  the  evils 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


229 


of  this  second  stage  of  human  evolution  came  to  a  head. 
Max  Muller  has  pointed  out  that  among  the  words  which 
are  common  to  the  various  branches  of  Aryan  language, 
and  which  therefore  belong  to  the  very  early  period  before 
the  separation  of  these  branches,  there  are  not  found  the 
words  denoting  war  and  conflict  and  the  weapons  and 
instruments  of  strife — a  fact  which  suggests  a  long  con¬ 
tinuance  of  peaceful  habit  among  mankind  after  the  first 
formation  and  use  of  language. 

That  the  birth  of  language  and  the  birth  of  self-con¬ 
sciousness  were  approximately  simultaneous  is  a  probable 
theory,  and  one  favoured  by  many  thinkers  ;  1  but  the 
slow  beginnings  of  both  must  have  been  so  very  protracted 
that  it  is  perhaps  useless  to  attempt  any  very  exact  deter¬ 
mination.  Late  researches  seem  to  show  that  language 
began  in  what  might  be  called  tribal  expressions  of  mood 
and  feeling  ( holophrases  like  “  go-hunting-kill-bear  ”)  with¬ 
out  reference  to  individual  personalities  and  relationships  ; 
and  that  it  was  only  at  a  later  stage  that  words  like  “  I  ” 
and  “  Thou  ”  came  into  use,  and  the  holophrases  broke  up 
into  “parts  of  speech”  and  took  on  a  definite  grammatical 
structure.2  If  true,  these  facts  point  clearly  to  a  long 
foreground  of  rude  communal  language,  something  like 
though  greatly  superior  to  that  of  the  animals,  preceding 
or  preparing  the  evolution  of  Self-consciousness  proper, 
in  the  forms  of  "  I  ”  and  “  Thou  ”  and  the  grammar  of 
personal  actions  and  relations.  “  They  show  that  the 
plural  and  all  other  forms  of  number  in  grammar  arise  not 
by  multiplication  of  an  original  ‘  1/  but  by  selection  and 

1  Dr.  Bucke  ( Cosmic  Consciousness )  insists  on  their  simultaneity, 
but  places  both  events  excessively  far  back,  as  we  should  think,  i.e. 
200,000  or  300,000  years  ago.  Possibly  he  does  not  differentiate 
sufficiently  between  the  rude  language  of  the  holophrase  and  the 
much  later  growth  of  formed  and  grammatical  speech. 

2  See  A.  E.  Crawley’s  Idea  of  the  Soul,  ch.  ii ;  Jane  Harrison’s 
Themis,  pp.  473-5  ;  and  E.  J.  Payne’s  History  of  the  New  World  called 
America,  vol.  ii,  pp.  115  sq.,  where  the  beginning  of  self-consciousness 
is  associated  with  the  break-up  of  the  holophrase. 


230  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


gradual  exclusion  from  an  original  collective  '  we.’  Accor- 
ing  to  this  view  the  birth  of  self-consciousness  in  the  human 
family,  or  in  any  particular  race  or  section  of  the  human 
family,  must  have  been  equally  slow  and  hesitating  ;  and 
it  would  be  easy  to  imagine,  as  just  said,  that  there  may 
have  been  a  very  long  and  ‘  golden  '  period  at  its  beginning, 
before  the  new  consciousness  took  on  its  maturer  and 
harsher  forms. 

All  estimates  of  the  Time  involved  in  these  evolutions 
of  early  man  are  notoriously  most  divergent  and  most 
difficult  to  be  sure  of  ;  but  if  we  take  500,000  years  ago 
for  the  first  appearance  of  veritable  Man  (homo  primi- 
genius ),3  and  (following  Professor  W.  J.  Sollas)3  30,000  or 
40,000  years  ago  for  the  first  tool-using  men  (homo  sapiens) 
of  the  Chellean  Age  (palaeolithic),  15,000  for  the  rock- 
paintings  and  inscriptions  of  the  Aurignacian  and  Magdale- 
nian  peoples,  and  5,000  years  ago  for  the  first  actual  his¬ 
torical  records  that  have  come  down  to  us,  we  may  perhaps 
get  something  like  a  proportion  between  the  different 
periods.  That  is  to  say,  half  a  million  years  for  the  purely 
animal  man  in  his  different  forms  and  grades  of  evolution. 
Then  somewhere  towards  the  end  of  palaeolithic  or  com- 
.  mencement  of  neolithic  times  Self-consciousness  dimly 
beginning  and,  after  some  10,000  years  of  slow  germination 
and  pre-historic  culture,  culminating  in  the  actual  historic 
period  and  the  dawn  of  civilisation  40  or  50  centuries  ago, 
and  to-day  (we  hope),  reaching  the  climax  which  precedes 
or  foretells  its  abatement  and  transformation. 

No  doubt  many  geologists  and  anthropologists  would 
favour  periods  greatly  longer  than  those  here  mentioned  ; 
but  possibly  there  would  be  some  agreement  as  to  the  ratio 

1  Themis,  p.  471. 

3  Though  Dr.  Arthur  Keith,  Ancient  Types  of  Man  (1911),  pp.  93 
and  102,  puts  the  figure  at  more  like  a  million. 

3  See  Ancient  Hunters  (1915)  ;  also  Hastings’s  Encycl.  art.  “  Ethno¬ 
logy  ”  and  Havelock  Ellis,  “  The  Origin  of  War,”  in  The  Philosophy 
of  Conflict  and  other  Essays. 


231 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 

to  each  other  of  the  times  concerned  :  that  is,  the  said 
authorities  would  probably  allow  for  a  very  long  animal- 
man  1  period  corresponding  to  the  first  stage  ;  for  a  much 
shorter  aggressively  ‘  self  conscious  ’  period,  corresponding 
to  the  Second  Stage — perhaps  lasting  only  one  thiitieth 
or  fiftieth  of  the  time  of  the  first  period  ;  and  then— -if 
they  looked  forward  at  all  to  a  third  stage — would  be  inclined 
for  obvious  reasons  to  attribute  to  that  again  a  veiy  extended 
duration. 

However,  all  this  is  very  speculative.  To  return  to  the 
difficulty  about  Language  and  the  consideration  of  those 
early  times  when  words  adequate  to  the  expression  of 
religious  or  magical  ideas  simply  did  not  exist,  it  is  clear 
that  the  only  available,  or  at  any  rate  the  chief  means  of 
expression,  in  those  tinies,  must  have  consisted  in  gestures, 
in  attitudes,  in  ceremonial  actions — in  a  more  or  less  elaborate 
ritual,  in  fact.*  Such  ideas  as  Adoration,  Thanksgiving, 
confession  of  Guilt,  placation  of  Wrath,  Expiation,  Saciifice, 
Celebration  of  Community,  sacramental  Atonement,  and 
a  score  of  others  could  at  that  time  be  expressed  by  appro¬ 
priate  rites— and  as  a  matter  of  fact  are  often  so  expressed 
even  now — more  readily  and  directly  than  by  language. 
‘  Dancing  ’ — when  that  word  came  to  be  invented — did 
not  mean  a  mere  flinging  about  of  the  hmbs  in  recreation, 
but  any  expressive  movements  of  the  body  which  might  be 
used  to  convey  the  feelings  of  the  dancer  or  of  the  audience 
whom  he  represented.  And  so  the  ‘  religious  dance  became 
a  most  important  part  of  ritual. 


So  much  for  the  second  stage  of  Consciousness.  Let  us 
now  pass  on  to  the  Third  Stage.  It  is  evident  that  the 
process  of  disruption  and  dissolution— disruption  both  of 

1  i  Use  the  phrase  ‘  animal-man  ’  here,  not  with  any  flavour  of 
contempt  or  reprobation,  as  the  dear  Victorians  would  have  used 
it,  but  with  a  sense  of  genuine  respect  and  admiration  such  as  one 
feels  towards  the  animals  themselves. 

2  See  supra,  ch.  ix,  pp.  147,  148  and  xi,  pp.  165,  166. 


232  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

the  human  mind,  and  of  society  round  about  it,  due  to  the 
action  of  the  Second  Stage— could  not  go  on  indefinitely. 
There  aie  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  at  the  present 
moment  who  are  dying  of  mental  or  bodily  disease— their 
nervous  systems  broken  down  by  troubles  connected  with 
excessive  self-consciousness — selfish  fears  and  worries  and 
restlessness.  Society  at  large  is  perishing  both  in  industry 
and  in  warfare  through  the  domination  in  its  organism  of 
the  self-motives  of  greed  and  vanity  and  ambition.  This 
cannot  go  on  for  ever.  Things  must  either  continue  in 
the  same  strain,  in  which  case  it  is  evident  that  we  are 
approaching  a  crisis  of  utter  dissolution,  oy  a  new  element 
must  enter  in,  a  new  inspiration  of  life,  and  we  (as  individuals) 
and  the  society  of  which  we  form  a  part,  must  make  a  fresh 

stait.  What  is  that  new  and  necessary  element  of  regenera¬ 
tion  ? 

It  is  evident  that  it  must  be  a  new  birth — the  entry 
into  a  further  stage  of  consciousness  which  must  supersede 
the  present  one.  Through  some  such  crisis  as  we  have 
spoken  of,  through  the  extreme  of  suffering,  the  mind  of 
Man,  us  ut  pyesent  constituted ,  has  to  die.1 2  Self-consciousness 
has  to  die,  and  be  buried,  and  rise  again  in  a  new  form. 
Probably  nothing  but  the  extreme  of  suffering  can  bring 
this  about. ^  And  what  is  this  new  form  in  which  con¬ 
sciousness  has  to  rearise  ?  Obviously,  since  the  miseries  of 
the  world  during  countless  centuries  have  dated  from  that 
fatal  attempt  to  make  the  little  personal  self  the  centre  of 
effort  and  activity,  and  since  that  attempt  has  inevitably  led 
to  disunity  and  discord  and  death,  both  within  the  mind  itself 
and  within  the  body  of  society,  there  is  nothing  left  but 
the  return  to  a  Consciousness  which  shall  have  Unity  as 
its  foundation-principle,  and  which  shall  proceed  from  the 

1  "  The  mind  must  be  restrained  in  the  heart  till  it  comes  to  an 
end,”  says  the  Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad. 

2  One  may  remember  in  this  connexion  the  tapas  of  the  Hindu 
yogi,  or  the  oi  deals  of  initiates  into  the  pagan  Mysteries  generally. 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


233 


direct  sense  and  perception  of  such  an  unity  throughout 
creation.  The  simple  mind  of  Early  Man  and  the  Animals 
was  of  that  character — a  consciousness,  so  to  speak,  con¬ 
tinuous  through  nature,  and  though  running  to  points  of 
illumination  and  foci  of  special  activity  in  individuals,  yet 
at  no  point  essentially  broken  or  imprisoned  in  separate 
compartments.  (And  it  is  this  continuity  of  the  primitive 
mind  which  enables  us,  as  I  have  already  explained,  to 
understand  the  mysterious  workings  of  instinct  and  intui¬ 
tion.)  To  some  such  unity-consciousness  we  have  to 
return  ;  but  clearly  it  will  not  be — it  is  not — of  the  simple 
inchoate  character  of  the  First  Stage,  for  it  has  been  en¬ 
riched,  deepened,  and  greatly  extended  by  the  experience 
of  the  Second  Stage.  It  is  in  fact,  a  new  order  of  mentality 
— the  consciousness  of  the  Third  Stage. 

In  order  to  understand  the  operation  and  qualities  of 
this  Third  Consciousness,  it  may  be  of  assistance  just  now 
to  consider  in  what  more  or  less  rudimentary  way  or  ways 
it  figured  in  the  pagan  rituals  and  in  Christianity.  We 
have  seen  the  rude  Siberyaks  in  North-Eastern  Asia  or 
the  c  Grizzly  ’  tribes  of  North  American  Indians  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Mount  Shasta  paying  their  respects  and 
adoration  to  a  captive  bear — at  once  the  food-animal, 
and  the  divinity  of  the  Tribe.  A  tribesman  had  slain  a 
bear — and,  be  it  said,  had  slain  it  not  in  a  public  hunt 
with  all  due  ceremonies  observed,  but  privately  for  his 
own  satisfaction.  He  had  committed,  therefore,  a  sin 
theoretically  unpardonable  ;  for  had  he  not — to  gratify 
his  personal  desire  for  food — levelled  a  blow  at  the  guardian 
spirit  of  the  Tribe  ?  Had  he  not  alienated  himself  from 
his  fellows  by  destroying  its  very  symbol  ?  There  was 
only  one  way  by  which  he  could  regain  the  fellowship  of 
his  companions.  He  must  make  amends  by  some  public 
sacrifice,  and  instead  of  retaining  the  flesh  of  the  animal 
for  himself  he  must  share  it  with  the  whole  tribe  (or  clan) 


234 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


in  a  common  feast,  while  at  the  same  time,  tensest  prayers 
and  thanks  are  offered  to  the  animal  for  the  gift  of  his  body 
for  food.  The  Magic  formula  demanded  nothing  less  than 
this — else  dread  disaster  would  fall  upon  the  man  who  sinned, 
and  upon  the  whole  brotherhood.  Here,  and  in  a  hundred 
similar  rites,  we  see  the  three  phases  of  tribal  psychology — - 
the  first,  in  which  the  individual  member  simply  remains 
within  the  compass  of  the  tribal  mind,  and  only  acts  in 
harmony  with  it  ;  the  second,  in  which  the  individual 
steps  outside  and  to  gratify  his  personal  self  performs  an 
action  which  alienates  him  from  his  fellows  ;  and  the  third, 
in  which,  to  make  amends  and  to  prove  his  sincerity,  he 
submits  to  some  sacrifice,  and  by  a  common  feast  or  some 
such  ceremony  is  received  back  again  into  the  unity  of 
the  fellowship.  The  body  of  the  animal-divinity  is  con¬ 
sumed,  and  the  latter  becomes,  both  in  the  spirit  and  in 
the  flesh,  the  Saviour  of  the  tribe. 

In  course  of  time,  when  the  Totem  or  Guardian-spirit 
is  no  longer  merely  an  Animal,  or  animal-headed  Genius, 
but  a  quite  human-formed  Divinity,  still  the  same  general 
outline  of  ideas  is  preserved — only  with  gathered  intensity 
owing  to  the  specially  human  interest  of  the  drama.  The 
Divinity  who  gives  his  life  for  his  flock  is  no  longer  just 
an  ordinary  Bull  or  Lamb,  but  Adonis  or  Osiris  or  Dionysus 
or  Jesus.  He  is  betrayed  by  one  of  his  own  followers,  and 
suffers  death,  but  rises  again  redeeming  all  with  himself 
in  the  one  fellowship  ;  and  the  corn  and  the  wine  and  the 
wild  flesh  which  were  his  body,  and  which  he  gave  for  the 
sustenance  of  mankind,  are  consumed  in  a  holy  supper 
of  reconciliation.  It  is  always  the  return  to  unity  which 
is  the  ritual  of  Salvation,  and  of  which  the  symbol  is  the 
Eucharist — the  second  birth,  the  formation  of  “  a  new 
creature  when  old  things  are  passed  away.”  For  “  Except 
a  man  be  born  again,  he  cannot  see  the  Kingdom  of  God  ”  ; 
and  “  the  first  man  is  of  the  earth,  earthy,  but  the  second 
man  is  the  Lord  from  heaven.”  Like  a  strange  refrain, 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


235 


and  from  centuries  before  our  era,  comes  down  this  belief 
in  a  god  who  is  imprisoned  in  each  man,  and  whose  libera¬ 
tion  is  a  new  birth  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  creature  : 

“  Rejoice,  ye  initiates  in  the  mystery  of  the  liberated  god  ” 
— rejoice  in  the  thought  of  the  hero  who  died  as  a  mortal 
in  the  coffin,  but  rises  again  as  Lord  of  all ! 

Who  then  was  this  “  Christos  ”  for  whom  the  world 
was  waiting  three  centuries  before  our  era  (and  indeed 
centuries  before  that)  ?  Who  was  this  “  thrice  Saviour 
whom  the  Greek  Gnostics  acclaimed  ?  What  was  the 
meaning  of  that  ‘  'coming  of  the  Son  of  Man  ”  whom  Daniel 
beheld  in  vision  among  the  clouds  of  heaven  ?  or  of  the 
“  perfect  man  ”  who,  Paul  declared,  should  deliver  us 
from  the  bondage  of  corruption  into  the  glorious  liberty 
of  the  children  of  God  ?  What  was  this  salvation  which 
time  after  time  and  times  again  the  pagan  deities  promised 
to  their  devotees,  and  which  the  Eleusinian  and  other 
Mysteries  represented  in  their  religious  dramas  with  such 
convincing  enthusiasm  that  even  Pindar  could  say  “  Happy 
is  he  who  has  seen  them  (the  Mysteries)  before  he  goes 
beneath  the  hollow  earth  :  that  man  knows  the  true  end 
of  life  and  its  source  divine  ” ;  and  concerning  which 
Sophocles  and  Aeschylus  were  equally  enthusiastic  ?  1 

Can  we  doubt,  in  the  light  of  all  that  we  have  already 
said,  what  the  answer  to  these  questions  is  ?  As  with 
the  first  blossoming  of  self-consciousness  in  the  human 
mind  came  the  dawn  of  an  immense  cycle  of  experience — 
a  cycle  indeed  of  exile  from  Eden,  of  suffering  and  toil 
and  blind  wanderings  in  the  wilderness,  yet  a  cycle  absolutely 
necessary  and  unavoidable — so  now  the  redemption,  the 
return,  the  restoration  has  to  come  through  another  forward 
step,  in  the  same  domain.  Abandoning  the  quest  and  the 
glorification  of  the  separate  isolated  self  we  have  to  return 
to  the  cosmic  universal  life.  It  is  the  blossoming  indeed 

1  See  Parnell's  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  vol.  iii,  p.  194  ;  also  The 
Mysteries,  Pagan  and  Christian,  by  S.  Cheetham,  D.D.  (London,  1897). 


236  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

of  this  ‘  new  ’  life  in  the  deeps  of  our  minds  which  is  salvation, 
and  which  all  the  expressions  which  I  have  just  cited  have 
indicated.  It  is  this  presence  which  all  down  the  ages 
has  been  hailed  as  Saviour  and  Liberator :  the  daybreak  of  a 
consciousness  so  much  vaster,  so  much  more  glorious,  than 
all  that  has  gone  before  that  the  little  candle  of  the  local  self 
is  swallowed  up  in  its  rays.  It  is  the  return  home,  the 
ieturn  into  diiect  touch  with  Nature  and  Man — the  libera¬ 
tion  from  the  long  exile  of  separation,  from  the  painful 
sense  of  isolation  and  the  odious  nightmare  of  guilt  and 
sin.  Can  we  doubt  that  this  new  birth — this  third  stage 
of  consciousness,  if  we  like  to  call  it  so— has  to  come,  that 
it  is  indeed  not  merely  a  pious  hope  or  a  tentative  theory, 
but  a  fact  testified  to  already  by  a  cloud  of  witnesses  in 
the  past  witnesses  shining  in  their  own  easily  recognisable 
and  authentic  light,  yet  for  the  most  part  isolated  from 
each  other  among  the  arid  and  unfruitful  wastes  of  Civilisa¬ 
tion,  like  glow-worms  in  the  dry  grass  of  a  summer  night  ? 

Since  the  first  dim  evolution  of  human  self-consciousness 
an  immense  period,  as  we  have  said— perhaps  30,000  years, 
pei haps  even  more  has  elapsed.  Now,  in  the  present 
day  this  period  is  reaching  its  culmination,  and  though 
it  will  not  terminate  immediately,  its  end  is,  so  to  speak, 
m  sight.  Meanwhile,  during  all  the  historical  age  behind 
us  -say  for  the  last  4,000  or  5,000  years — evidence  has  been 
coming  in  (partly  in  the  religious  rites  recorded,  partly 
in  oracles,  poems  and  prophetic  literature)  of  the  onset 
of  this  fuither  illumination — “  the  light  which  never  was 
on  sea  or  land  and  the  cloud  of  witnesses,  scattered 
at  first,  has  in  these  later  centuries  become  so  evident  and 
so  notable  that  we  are  tempted  to  believe  in  or  to  anticipate 
a  gieat  and  general  new  birth,  as  now  not  so  very  far  off.1 
[We  should,  however,  do  well  to  remember,  in  this  con- 

*  For  an  amplification  of  all  this  theme,  see  Dr.  Bucke’s  remark¬ 
able  and  epoch-making  book,  Cosmic  Consciousness  (first  published 
at  Philadelphia,  1901). 


THE  MEANING  OF  IT  ALL 


237 


nexion,  that  many  a  time  already  in  history  the  Millennium 
has  been  prophesied,  and  yet  not  arrived  punctual  to  date, 
and  to  take  to  ourselves  the  words  of  ‘  Peter/  who  somewhat 
grievously  disappointed  at  the  long-delayed  second  coming 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  in  the  clouds  of  heaven,  wrote  in  his 
second  Epistle  :  “  There  shall  come  in  the  last  days  scoffers, 
walking  after  their  own  lusts,  and  saying,  Where  is  the 
promise  of  his  coming  ?  for  since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all 
things  continue  as  they  were  from  the  beginning  of  the 
creation.” 

I  say  that  all  through  the  historical 1  age  behind  us  there 
has  been  evidence — even  though  scattered — of  salvation 
and  the  return  of  the  Cosmic  life.  Man  has  never  been  so 
completely  submerged  in  the  bitter  sea  of  self-centredness 
but  what  he  has  occasionally  been  able  to  dash  the  spray 
from  his  eyes  and  glimpse  the  sun  and  the  glorious  light  of 
heaven.  From  how  far  back  we  cannot  say,  but  from  an 
immense  antiquity  come  the  beautiful  myths  which  indicate 
this. 


Cinderella,  the  cinder-maiden,  sits  unbeknown  in  her  earthly 
hutch ; 

Gibed  and  jeered  at  she  bewails  her  lonely  fate  ; 

Nevertheless  youngest-born  she  surpasses  her  sisters  and  endues 
a  garment  of  the  sun  and  stars  ; 

From  a  tiny  spark  she  ascends  and  irradiates  the  universe, 
and  is  wedded  to  the  prince  of  heaven. 

How  lovely  this  vision  of  the  little  maiden  sitting  un¬ 
beknown  close  to  the  Hearth-fire  of  the  universe  herself 
indeed  just  a  little  spark  from  it  ;  despised  and  rejected  ; 
rejected  by  the  world,  despised  by  her  two  elder  sisters 
(the  body  and  the  intellect)  ;  yet  she,  the  soul,  though 
latest-born,  by  far  the  most  beautiful  of  the  three.  And  of 
the  Prince  of  Love  who  redeems  and  sets  her  free ;  and  of  her 

1  2  Peter  iii.  4  ;  written  probably  about  a.d.  150, 


238  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

wedding-garment  the  glory  and  beauty  of  all  nature  and 
of  the  heavens  !  The  parables  of  Jesus  are  charming  in 
theii  way,  but  they  hardly  reach  this  height  of  inspiration. 

Or  the  world-old  myth  of  Eros  and  Psyche.  How  strange 
that  here  again  there  are  three  sisters  (the  three  stages  of 
human  evolution),  and  the  latest-born  the  most  beautiful 
of  the  three,  and  the  jealousies  and  persecutions  heaped 
on  the  youngest  by  the  others,  and  especially  by  Aphrodite 
the  goddess  of  mere  sensual  charm.  And  again  the  coming 
of  the  unknown,  the  unseen  Lover,  on  whom  it  is  not  per¬ 
mitted  for  mortals  to  look  j  and  the  long,  long  tests  and 
sufferings  and  trials  which  Psyche  has  to  undergo  before 
Eros  may  really  take  her  to  his  arms  and  translate  her  to 
the  heights  of  heaven.  Can  we  not  imagine  how  when 
these  things  were  represented  in  the  Mysteries  the  world 
flocked  to  see  them,  and  the  poets  indeed  said,  “  Happy 
are  they  that  see  and  seeing  can  understand  ?  ”  Can  we 
not  understand  how  it  was  that  the  Amphictyonic  decree 
of  the  second  century  b.c.  spoke  of  these  same  Mysteries 
as  enforcing  the  lesson  that  "  the  greatest  of  human  blessings 
is  fellowship  and  mutual  trust  ”  ? 


XV 

THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 

Thus  we  come  to  a  thing  which  we  must  not  pass  over, 
because  it  throws  great  light  on  the  meaning  and  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  all  these  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  great  World- 
religion.  I  mean  the  subject  of  the  Ancient  Mysteries. 
And  to  this  I  will  give  a  few  pages. 

These  Mysteries  were  probably  survivals  of  the  oldest 
religious  rites  of  the  Greek  races,  and  in  their  earlier  forms 
consisted  not  so  much  in  worship  of  the  gods  of  Heaven 
as  of  the  divinities  of  Earth,  and  of  Nature  and  Death. 
Crude,  no  doubt,  at  first,  they  gradually  became  (especially 
in  their  Eleusinian  form)  more  refined  and  philosophical ;  the 
rites  were  gradually  thrown  open,  on  certain  conditions,  not 
only  to  men  generally,  but  also  to  women,  and  even  to 
slaves  ;  and  in  the  end  they  influenced  Christianity  deeply.1 

There  were  apparently  three  forms  of  teaching  made 
use  of  in  these  rites  :  these  were  Xtyo/utva,  things  said  ; 
Stzucvvfieva,  things  shown ;  and  things  per¬ 

formed  or  acted?  I  have  given  already  some  instances 
of  things  said— texts  whispered  for  consolation  in  the 
neophyte’s  ear,  and  so  forth  ;  of  the  third  group,  things 
enacted,  we  have  a  fair  amount  of  evidence.  There  were 

1  See  Edwin  Hatch,  D.D.,  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages 
on  the  Christian  Church  (London,  1890),  pp.  283-5. 

2  Cheetham,  op.  cit .,  pp.  49-61  sq. 

239 


240  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

ritual  dramas  or  passion-plays,  of  which  an  important 
one  dealt  with  the  descent  of  Kore  or  Proserpine  into  the 
underworld,  as  in  the  Eleusinian  representations,1  and  her 
redemption  and  restoration  to  the  upper  world  in  Spring  ) 
another  with  the  sufferings  of  Psyche  and  her  rescue  by 
Eros,  as  described  by  Apuleius  himself  an  initiate  in  the 
cult  of  Isis.  There  is  a  parody  by  Lucian,  which  tells 
of  the  birth  of  Apollo,  the  marriage  of  Coronis,  and  the 
coming  of  Aesculapius  as  Saviour ;  there  was  the  dying 
and  rising  again  of  Dionysus  (chief  divinity  of  the  Orphic 
cult)  ;  and  sometimes  the  mystery  of  the  birth  of  Dionysus 
as  a  holy  child.3  There  was,  every  year  at  Eleusis,  a 
solemn  and  lengthy  procession  or  pilgrimage  made,  symbolic 
of  the  long  pilgrimage  of  the  human  soul,  its  sufferings 
and  deliverance. 

Almost  always,  says  Dr.  Cheetham,  “  the  suffering 
of  a  god  suffering  followed  by  triumph — seems  to  have 
been  the  subject  of  the  sacred  drama.”  Then  occasionally 
to  the  Neophytes,  after  taking  part  in  the  pilgrimage, 
and  when  their  minds  had  been  prepared  by  an  ordeal  of 
darkness  and  fatigue  and  terrors,  was  accorded  a  revelation 
of  Paradise,  and  even  a  vision  of  I  ransfiguration — the  form 
of  the  Hierophant  himself,  or  teacher  of  the  Mysteries, 
being  seen  half-lost  in  a  blaze  of  light. 4  Finally,  there 
was  the  eating  of  food  and  drinking  of  barley-drink  from 
the  sacred  chest  5 — a  kind  of  Communion  or  Eucharist. 

1  See  Farnell,  op.  cit.,  iii.  i58  sq. 

2  See  The  Golden  Ass. 

3  Farnell,  iii.  177.  4  Ibidt>  lyg  sq . 

5  Ibid.,  186.  Sacred  chests,  in  which  holy  things  were  kept,  figure 
frequently  m  early  rites  and  legends — as  in  the  case  of  the  ark  of 
the  Jewish  tabernacle,  the  ark  or  box  carried  in  celebrations  of  the 
mysteries  of  Bacchus  (Theocritus,  Idyll  xxvi),  the  legend  of  Pan¬ 
dora  s  box  which  contained  the  seeds  of  all  good  and  evil,  the  ark 
of  Noah  which  saved  all  living  creatures  from  the  flood,  the  Argo 
of  the  argonauts,  the  moonshaped  boat  in  which  Isis  floating  over 
the  waters  gathered  together  the  severed  limbs  of  Osiris,  and  so 
brought  about  his  resurrection,  and  the  many  chests  or  coffins  out 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


241 


Apuleius  in  The  Golden  Ass  gives  an  interesting  account 
of  his  induction  into  the  mysteries  of  Isis  :  how,  bidding 
farewell  one  evening  to  the  general  congregation  outside, 
and  clothed  in  a  new  linen  garment,  he  was  handed  by 
the  priest  into  the  inner  recesses  of  the  temple  itself ;  how 
he  “  approached  the  confines  of  death,  and  having  trod 
on  the  threshold  of  Proserpine  (the  Underworld),  returned 
therefrom,  being  borne  through  all  the  elements.  At 
midnight  I  saw  the  sun  shining  with  its  brilliant  light  : 
and  I  approached  the  presence  of  the  Gods  beneath  and 
the  Gods  above,  and  stood  near  and  worshipped  them.,, 
During  the  night  things  happened  which  must  not  be 
disclosed  ;  but  in  the  morning  he  came  forth  “  consecrated 
by  being  dressed  in  twelve  stoles  painted  with  the  figures 
of  animals.”1  He  ascended  a  pulpit  in  the  midst  of  the 
Temple,  carrying  in  his  right  hand  a  burning  torch,  while 
a  chaplet  encircled  his  head,  from  which  palm-leaves  pro¬ 
jected  like  rays  of  light.  “  Thus  arrayed  like  the  Sun , 
and  placed  so  as  to  resemble  a  statue,  on  a  sudden,  the 
curtains  being  drawn  aside,  I  was  exposed  to  the  gaze  of 
the  multitude.  After  this  I  celebrated  the  most  joyful 
day  of  my  initiation,  as  my  natal  day  [day  of  the  New 
Birth]  and  there  was  a  joyous  banquet  and  mirthful  con¬ 
versation.” 

One  can  hardly  refuse  to  recognise  in  this  account  the 

description  of  some  kind  of  ceremony  which  was  supposed 

to  seal  the  illumination  of  a  man  and  his  new  birth  into 

divinity — the  animal  origin,  the  circling  of  all  experience, 

the  terrors  of  death,  and  the  resurrection  in  the  form  of 

of  which  the  various  gods  (Adonis,  Attis,  Osiris,  Jesus),  having  been 
laid  there  in  death,  rose  again  for  the  redemption  of  the  world.  They 
all  evidently  refer  to  the  mystic  womb  of  Nature  and  of  Woman, 
and  are  symbols  of  salvation  and  redemption.  (For  a  full  discussion 
of  this  subject,  see  The  Great  Law  of  religious  origins,  by  W.  Williamson, 
ch.  iv.) 

1  An  allusion  no  doubt  to  the  twelve  signs  of  the  Zodiac,  the  path¬ 
way  of  the  Sun,  as  well  as  to  the  practice  of  the  ancient  priests  of 
wearing  the  skins  of  totem-animals  in  sign  of  their  divinity. 

16 


242 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


the  Sun,  the  symbol  of  all  light  and  life.  The  very  word 
“  illumination  ”  carries  the  ideas  of  light  and  a  new  birth 
with  it.  Reitzenstein  in  his  very  interesting  book  on  the 
Greek  Mysteries  1  speaks  over  and  over  again  of  the  illu¬ 
mination  (< pwTKTfiog )  which  was  held  to  attend  Initiation 
and  Salvation.  The  doctrine  of  Salvation  indeed  (< jtorrip'ia ) 
was,  as  we  have  already  seen,  rife  and  widely  current  in 
the  Second  Century  b.c.  It  represented  a  real  experience, 
and  the  man  who  shared  this  experience  became  a  Ouoq 
avOpwnog  or  divine  man.2 3 4  In  the  Orphic  Tablets  the 
phrase  “  I  am  a  child  of  earth  and  the  starry  heaven,  but 
my  race  is  of  heaven  (alone)  ”  occurs  more  than  once. 
In  one  of  the  longest  of  them  the  dead  man  is  instructed 
“  after  he  has  passed  the  waters  (of  Lethe)  where  the  white 
Cypress  and  the  House  of  Hades  are  ”  to  address  these 
very  words  to  the  guardians  of  the  Lake  of  Memory  while 
he  asks  for  a  drink  of  cold  water  from  that  Lake.  In 
another  the  dead  person  himself  is  thus  addressed  :  “  Hail, 
thou  who  hast  endured  the  Suffering,  such  as  indeed  thou 
hadst  never  suffered  before  ;  thou  hast  become  god  from 
man  !  ”  3  Ecstasy  was  the  acme  of  the  religious  life  ;  and, 
what  is  especially  interesting  to  us,  Salvation  or  the  divine 
nature  was  open  to  all  men — to  all,  that  is,  who  should  go 
through  the  necessary  stages  of  preparation  for  it. 4 

Reitzenstein  contends  (p.  26)  that  in  the  Mysteries, 
transfiguration  (/ uerafxop<p(omc ;),  salvation  (o-wrrjpta),  and 
new  birth  (7 raXiyysveafa)  were  often  conjoined.  He  says 

1  Die  hellenistischen  Mystevien-Religionen,  by  R.  Reitzenstein, 
Leipzig,  1910. 

2  Reitzenstein,  p.  12. 

3  These  Tablets  (so-called)  are  instructions  to  the  dead  as  to  their 
passage  into  the  other  world,  and  have  been  found  in  the  tombs, 
in  Italy  and  elsewhere,  inscribed  on  very  thin  gold  plates  and  buried 
with  the  departed.  See  Manual  of  Greek  Antiquities  by  Percy  Gardner 
and  F.  B.  Jevons  (1893)  ;  also  Prolegomena  to  Greek  Religion  by  Jane 
E.  Harrison  (1903). 

4  Reitzenstein  pp.  15  and  18  ;  also  S.  J.  Case,  Evolution  of  Early 
Christianity,  p.  301. 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


243 


(p-  3J)>  that  in  the  Egyptian  Osiris-cult,  the  Initiate  acquires 
a  nature  “  equal  to  God  "  (lctoOeoq),  the  very  same  ex¬ 
pression  as  that  used  of  Christ  Jesus  in  Philippians  ii.  6  ; 
he  mentions  Apollonius  of  Tyana  and  Sergius  Paulus  as 
instances  of  men  who  by  their  contemporaries  were  con¬ 
sidered  to  have  attained  this  nature  ;  and  he  quotes  Akh- 
naton  (Pharaoh  of  Egypt  in  1375  b.c.)  as  having  said, 
“  Thou  art  in  my  heart ;  none  other  knows  Thee,  save  thy 
son  Akhnaton  ;  Thou  hast  initiated  him  into  thy  wisdom 
and  into  thy  power/'  He  also  quotes  the  words  of  Hermes 
(Trismegistus) — “  Come  unto  Me,  even  as  children  to  their 
mother's  bosom  :  Thou  art  I,  and  I  am  Thou  ;  what  is 
thine  is  mine,  and  what  is  mine  is  thine  ;  for  indeed  I  am 
thine  image  (aSwAov),"  and  refers  to  the  dialogue  between 
Hermes  and  Tat,  in  which  they  speak  of  the  great  and 
mystic  New  Birth  and  Union  with  the  All — with  all  Elements, 
Plants  and  Animals,  Time  and  Space. 

“  The  Mysteries,"  says  Dr.  Cheetham  very  candidly, 
“  influenced  Christianity  considerably  and  modified  it  in 
some  important  respects  "  ;  and  Dr.  Hatch,  as  we  have 
seen,  not  only  supports  this  general  view,  but  follows  it 
out  in  detail.1  He  points  out  that  the  membership  of  the 
Mystery-societies  was  very  numerous  in  the  earliest  times, 
a.d.  ;  that  their  general  aims  were  good,  including  a  sense 
of  true  religion,  decent  life,  and  brotherhood ;  that 
cleanness  from  crime  and  confession  were  demanded  from 
the  neophyte  ;  that  confession  was  followed  by  baptism 
( KaOapaig )  and  that  by  sacrifice  ;  that  the  term  ^amayxae 
(illumination)  was  adopted  by  the  Christian  Church  as 
the  name  for  the  new  birth'  of  baptism  ;  that  the  Christian 
usage  of  placing  a  seal  on  the  forehead  came  from  the  same 
source  ;  that  baptism  itself  after  a  time  was  called  a  mystery 
(fivartipLov)  ;  that  the  sacred  cakes  and  barley-drink  of 
the  Mysteries  became  the  milk  and  honey  and  bread  and 
wine  of  the  first  Christian  Eucharists,  and  that  the  occasional 
1  See  Hatch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  290  sq. 


244  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


sacrifice  of  a  lamb  on  the  Christian  altar  (“  whose  mention 
is  often  suppressed  ”)  probably  originated  in  the  satne  way. 
Indeed,  the  conception  of  the  communion-table  as  an  altar 
and  many  other  points  of  ritual  gradually  established  them¬ 
selves  from  these  sources  as  time  went  on.1  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  more  in  proof  of  the  extent  to  which  in 
these  ancient  representations  “  things  said  ”  and  “  scenes 
enacted  ”  forestalled  the  doctrines  and  ceremonials  of 
Christianity. 

But  what  of  the  second  group  above-mentioned,  the 
“  things  shown  ”7  It  is  not  so  easy  naturally  to  get  exact 
information  concerning  these,  but  they  seem  to  have  been 
specially  holy  objects,  probably  things  connected  with 
very  ancient  rituals  in  the  past — such  as  sacred  stones, 
old  and  rude  images  of  the  gods,  magic  nature-symbols, 
like  that  half-disclosed  ear  of  corn  above-mentioned  (Ch. 
V,  supra).  “  In  the  Temple  of  Isis  at  Philae,”  says  Dr. 
Cheetham,  “  the  dead  body  of  Osiris  is  represented  with 
stalks  of  corn  springing  from  it,  which  a  priest  waters  from 
a  vessel.  An  inscription  says  :  ‘  This  is  the  form  of  him 
whom  we  may  not  name,  Osiris  of  the  Mysteries  who  sprang 
from  the  returning  waters  ’  [the  Nile].”  Above  all,  no  doubt, 
there  were  images  of  the  phallus  and  the  vulva,  the  great 
symbols  of  human  fertility.  We  have  seen  (Ch.  XII) 
that  the  lingam  and  the  yoni  are,  even  down  to  to-day, 
commonly  retained  and  honoured  as  holy  objects  in  the 
S.  Indian  Temples,  and  anointed  with  oil  (some  of  them) 
for  a  very  practical  reason.  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer,  in  his  lately 
published  volumes  on  The  Folk-lore  of  the  Old  Testament, 
has  a  chapter  (in  vol.  ii)  on  the  very  numerous  sacred  stones 
of  various  shapes  and  sizes  found  or  spoken  of  in  Palestine 
and  other  parts  of  the  world.  Though  uncertain  as  to  the 
meaning  of  these  stones  he  mentions  that  they  are  “  fre- 

1  See  Dionysius  Areop.  (end  of  fifth  century),  who  describes  the 
Christian  rites  generally  in  Mystery  language  (Hatch,  296). 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


245 


quently,  though  not  always,  upright”  Anointing  them  with 
oil,  he  assures  us,  “  is  a  widespread  practice,  sometimes  by 
women  who  wish  to  obtain  children/’  And  he  concludes 
the  chapter  by  saying  :  “  The  holy  stone  at  Bethel  was 
probably  one  of  those  massive  standing  stones  or  rough 
pillars  which  the  Hebrews  called  masseboth,  and  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  were  regular  adjuncts  of  Canaanite  and 
early  Israelitish  sanctuaries/’  We  have  already  mentioned 
the  pillars  Jachin  and  Boaz  which  stood  before  the  Temple 
of  Solomon,  and  which  had  an  acknowledged  sexual  signifi¬ 
cance  ;  and  so  it  seems  probable  that  a  great  number  of 
these  holy  stones  had  a  similar  meaning.1  Following  this 
clue  it  would  appear  likely  that  the  lingam  thus  anointed 
and  worshiped  in  the  Temples  of  India  and  elsewhere  is 
the  original  rro^,2 3  adored  by  the  human  race  from  the 
very  beginning,  and  that  at  a  later  time,  when  the 
Priest  and  the  King,  as  objects  of  worship,  took  the  place 
of  the  Lingam,  they  also  were  anointed  with  the  chrism  of 
fertility.  That  the  exhibition  of  these  emblems  should 
be  part  of  the  original  ‘  Mystery  ’-rituals  was  perfectly 
natural — especially  because,  as  we  have  explained  already, 3 
old  customs  often  continued  on  in  a  quite  naive  fashion 
in  the  rituals,  when  they  had  come  to  be  thought  indecent 
or  improper  by  a  later  public  opinion  ;  and  (we  may  say) 
was  perfectly  in  order,  because  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  to 
show  that  in  savage  initiations,  of  which  the  Mysteries  were 
the  linear  descendants,  all  these  things  were  explained  to 

1  F.  Nork,  Der  Mystagog,  mentions  that  the  Roman  Penates 
were  commonly  anointed  with  oil.  J.  Stuart  Hay,  in  his  Life  of 
Elagabalus  (1911),  says  that  “  Elagabal  was  worshipped  under  the 
symbol  of  a  great  black  stone  or  meteorite,  in  the  shape  of  a  Phallus, 
which  having  fallen  from  the  heavens  represented  a  true  portion  of 
the  Godhead,  much  after  the  style  of  those  black  stone  images  popu¬ 
larly  venerated  in  Norway  and  other  parts  of  Europe.” 

2  J.  E.  Hewitt,  in  his  Riding  Races  of  Pre-historic  Times  (p.  64), 
gives  a  long  list  of  pre-historic  races  who  worshiped  the  lingam. 

3  See  Ch.  XI,  p.  171. 


246  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


the  novices,  and  their  use  actually  taught.1  No  doubt  also 
there  were  some  representations  or  dramatic  incidents  of 
a  fairly  coarse  character,  as  deriving  from  these  ancient 
sources.2  It  is,  however,  quaint  to  observe  how  the  mere 
mention  of  such  things  has  caused  an  almost  hysterical 
commotion  among  the  critics  of  the  Mysteries — from  the 
day  of  the  early  Christians  who  (in  order  to  belaud  their 
own  religion)  were  never  tired  of  abusing  the  Pagans,  on¬ 
ward  to  the  present  day  when  modern  scholars  either  on 
the  one  hand  follow  the  early  Christians  in  representing 
the  Mysteries  as  sinks  of  iniquity  or  on  the  other  (knowing 
this  charge  could  not  be  substantiated  except  in  the  period 
of  their  final  decadence)  take  the  line  of  ignoring  the  sexual 
interest  attaching  to  them  as  non-existent  or  at  any  rate 
unworthy  of  attention.  The  good  Archdeacon  Cheetham, 
for  instance,  while  writing  an  interesting  book  on  the  Mys¬ 
teries,  passes  by  this  side  of  the  subject  almost  as  if  it  did 
not  exist  ;  while  the  learned  Dr.  Farnell,  overcome  appar¬ 
ently  by  the  weight  of  his  learning,  and  unable  to  confront 
the  alarming  obstacle  presented  by  these  sexual  rites  and 
aspects,  hides  himself  behind  the  rather  non-committal 
remark  (speaking  of  the  Eleusinian  rites)  “  we  have  no 
right  to  imagine  any  part  of  this  solemn  ceremony  as  coarse 
or  obscene.”  3  As  Nature,  however,  has  been  known  (quite 

1  See  Ernest  Crawley’s  Mystic  Rose,  ch.  xiii,  pp.  310  and  313  : 
“  In  certain  tribes  of  Central  Africa  both  boys  and  girls  after  initiation 
must  as  soon  as  possible  have  intercourse.”  Initiation  being  not 
merely  preliminary  to,  but  often  actually  marriage.  The  same  among 
Kaffirs,  Congo  tribes,  Senegalese,  etc.  Also  among  the  Arunta  of 
Australia. 

2  Professor  Diederichs  has  said  that  “  in  much  ancient  ritual  it 
was  thought  that  mystic  communion  with  the  deity  could  be  obtained 
through  the  semblance  of  sex-intercourse — as  in  the  Attis-Cybele 
worship,  and  the  Isis-ritual.”  (Farnell.)  Reitzenstein  says  {op.  cit., 
p.  20)  that  the  Initiates,  like  some  of  the  Christian  Nuns  at  a  later 
time,  believed  in  union  with  God  through  receiving  the  seed. 

3  Farnell,  op.  cit.,  iii.  176.  Messrs.  Gardner  and  Jevons,  in  their 
Manual  oj  Greek  Antiquities,  above-quoted,  compare  the  Eleusinian 
Mysteries  favorably  with  some  of  the  others,  like  the  Arcadian,  the 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


247 


frequently)  to  be  coarse  or  obscene,  and  as  the  initiators 
of  the  Mysteries  were  probably  neither  '  good  5  nor  *  learned/ 
but  were  simply  anxious  to  interpret  Nature  as  best  they 
could,  we  cannot  find  fault  with  the  latter  for  the  way 
they  handled  the  problem,  nor  indeed  well  see  how  they 
could  have  handled  it  better. 

After  all  it  is  pretty  clear  that  the  early  peoples  saw 
in  Sex  the  great  cohesive  force  which  kept  (we  will  not  say 
Humanity  but  at  any  rate)  the  Tribe  together,  and  sus¬ 
tained  the  race.  In  the  stage  of  simple  Consciousness  this 
must  have  been  one  of  the  first  things  that  the  budding 
intellect  perceived.  Sex  became  one  of  the  earliest  divinities, 
and  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  its  organs  and  processes 
generally  were  invested  with  a  religious  sense  of  awe  and 
sanctity.  It  was  in  fact  the  symbol  (or  rather  the  actuality) 
of  the  permanent  undying  life  of  the  race,  and  as  such  was 
sacred  to  the  uses  of  the  race.  Whatever  taboos  may  have, 
among  different  peoples,  guarded  its  operations,  it  was  not 
essentially  a  thing  to  be  concealed,  or  ashamed  of.  Rather 
the  contrary.  For  instance  the  early  Christian  writer, 
Hippolytus,  Bishop  of  Pontus  (a.d.  200),  in  his  Refutation 
of  all  Heresies ,  Book  V,  says  that  the  Samothracian  Mys¬ 
teries,  just  mentioned,  celebrate  Adam  as  the  primal  or 
archetypal  Man  eternal  in  the  heavens  ;  and  he  then  con¬ 
tinues  <(  Habitually  there  stand  in  the  temple  of  the 
Samothracians  two  images  of  naked  men  having  both  hands 
stretched  aloft  towards  heaven,  and  their  pudenda  turned 
upwards,  as  is  also  the  case  with  the  statue  of  Mercury 
on  Mt.  Cyllene.  And  the  aforesaid  images  are  figures  of 
the  primal  man,  and  of  that  spiritual  one  that  is  born  again, 
in  every  respect  of  the  same  substance  with  that  [hist] 
man.” 

Troezenian,  the  ^Eginsean,  and  the  very  primitive  Samothracian  : 
saying  (p.  278)  that  of  the  last-mentioned  “  we  know  little,  but  safely 
conjecture  that  in  them  the  ideas  of  sex  and  procreation  dominated 
even  more  than  in  those  of  Eleusis.” 


248  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

This  extract  from  Hippolytus  occurs  in  the  long  discourse 
in  which  he  '  exposes  ’  the  heresy  of  the  so-called  Naassene 
doctiines  and  mysteries.  But  the  whole  discourse  should 
be  read  by  those  who  wish  to  understand  the  Gnostic  philo¬ 
sophy  of  the  period  contemporary  with  and  anterior  to  the 
birth  of  Christianity.  A  translation  of  the  discourse,  care¬ 
fully  analysed  and  annotated,  is  given  in  G.  R.  S.  Mead’s 
Thrice-greatest  Hermes  1  (vol.  i)  ;  and  Mead  himself,  speaking 
of  it,  says  (p.  141)  ^  Ihe  claim  of  these  Gnostics  was 
practically  that  the  good  news  of  the  Christ  [the  Christos] 
was  the  consummation  of  the  inner  doctrine  of  the  Mystery- 
institutions  of  all  the  nations  \  the  end  of  them  all  being 
the  revelation  of  the  Mystery  of  Man.”  Further,  he  explains 
that  the  Soul,  in  these  doctrines,  was  regarded  as  synonymous 
with  the  Cause  of  All ;  and  that  its  loves  were  twain — of 
Aphrodite  (or  Life),  and  of  Persephone  (or  Death  and  the 
other  world).  Also  that  Attis,  abandoning  his  sex  in  the 
worship  of  the  Mother-Goddess  (Dea  Syria),  ascends  to 
Heaven— a  new  man,  Male-female,  and  the  origin  of  all 
things :  the  hidden  Mystery  being  the  Phallus  itself, 
erected  as  Hermes  in  all  roads  and  boundaries  and  temples, 
the  Conductor  and  Reconductor  of  Souls. 

All  this  may  sound  strange,  but  one  may  fairly  say  that 
it  represented  in  its  degree,  and  in  that  first  ‘  unfallen  '  stage 
of  human  thought  and  psychology,  a  true  conception  of  the 
cosmic  Life,  and  indeed  a  conception  quite  sensible  and 
admirable,  until,  of  course,  the  Second  Stage  brought 
corruption.  No  sooner  was  this  great  force  of  the  cosmic 
life  diverted  from  its  true  uses  of  Generation  and  Regenera¬ 
tion,2  and  appropriated  by  the  individual  to  his  own  private 
pleasure — no  sooner  was  its  religious  character  as  a  tribal 

1  Reitzenstein,  op.  cit.,  quotes  the  discourse  largely.  The  Thrice- 
greatest  Hermes  may  also  be  consulted  for  a  translation  of  Plutarch’s 
Isis  and  Osiris. 

2  For  the  special  meaning  of  these  two  terms,  see  The  Drama  of 
Love  and  Death,  by  E.  Carpenter,  pp.  59-61. 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


249 


service  1  (often  rendered  within  the  Temple  precincts)  lost 
sight  of  or  degraded  into  a  commercial  transaction — than 
every  kind  of  evil  fell  upon  mankind.  Conuptio  optimi 
pessima.  It  must  be  remembered  too  that  simultaneous 
with  this  sexual  disruption  occurred  the  disruption  of 
other  human  relations  ;  and  we  cease  to  be  surprised  that 
disease  and  selfish  passions,  greed,  jealousy,  slander,  cruelty, 
and  wholesale  murder,  raged — and  have  raged  ever  since. 

But  for  the  human  soul — whatever  its  fate,  and  whatever 
the  dangers  and  disasters  that  threaten  it — there  is  always 
redemption  waiting.  As  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  this 
corruption  of  Sex  led  (quite  naturally)  to  its  denial  and 
rejection  ;  and  its  denial  led  to  the  differentiation  from  it 
of  Love.  Humanity  gained  by  the  enthronement  and 
deification  of  Love,  pure  and  undefiled,  and  (for  the  time 
being)  exalted  beyond  this  mortal  world,  and  free  from  all 
earthly  contacts.  But  again  in  the  end,  the  divorce  thus 
introduced  between  the  physical  and  the  spiritual  led  to 
the  crippling  of  both.  Love  relegated,  so  to  speak,  to 
heaven,  as  a  purely  philanthropical,  pious  and  *  spiritual  ’ 
affair,  became  exceedingly  dull ;  and  sex,  remaining  on 
earth,  but  deserted  by  the  redeeming  presence,  fell  into 
mere  “  carnal  curiosity  and  wretchlessness  of  unclean 
living.”  Obviously  for  the  human  race  there  remains 
nothing,  in  the  final  event,  but  the  reconciliation  of  the 
physical  and  the  spiritual,  and  after  many  sufferings,  the 
reunion  of  Eros  and  Psyche. 

There  is  still,  however,  much  to  be  said  about  the  Third 
State  of  Consciousness.  Let  us  examine  into  it  a  little 

1  Ernest  Crawley  in  The  Mystic  Rose  challenges  this  identification 
of  Religion  with  tribal  interests  ;  yet  his  arguments  are  not  very 
convincing.  On  p.  5  he  admits  that  “  there  is  a  religious  meaning 
inherent  in  the  primitive  conception  and  practice  of  all  human 
relations  ”  ;  and  a  large  part  of  his  ch.  xii  is  taken  up  in  showing  that 
even  such  institutions  as  the  Saturnalia  were  religious  in  confirming 
the  sense  of  social  union  and  leading  to  ‘  extended  identity.’ 


250  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


more  closely.  Clearly,  since  it  is  a  new  state,  and  not 
merely  an  extension  of  a  former  one,  one  cannot  arrive 
at  it  by  argument  derived  from  the  Second  state,  for  all 
conscious  Thought  such  as  we  habitually  use  simply  keeps 
us  in  the  Second  state.  No  animal  or  quite  primitive  man 
could  possibly  understand  what  we  mean  by  Self-conscious¬ 
ness  till  he  had  experienced  it.  Mere  argument  would  not 
enlighten  him.  And  so  no  one  in  the  Second  state  can 
quite  realise  the  Third  state  till  he  has  experienced  it. 
Still,  explanations  may  help  us  to  perceive  in  what  direction 
to  look,  and  to  recognise  in  some  of  our  experiences  an 
approach  to  the  condition  sought. 

Evidently  it  is  a  mental  condition  in  some  respects  more 
similar  to  the  first  than  to  the  second  stage.  The  second 
stage  of  human  psychologic  evolution  is  an  aberration, 
a  divorce,  a  parenthesis.  With  its  culmination  and  dis¬ 
missal  the  mind  passes  back  into  the  simple  state  of  union 
with  the  Whole.  (The  state  of  Ekagratd  in  the  Hindu 
philosophy :  one-pointedness,  singleness  of  mind.)  And 
the  consciousness  of  the  Whole,  and  of  things  past  and  things 
to  come  and  things  far  around — which  consciousness  had 
been  shut  out  by  the  concentration  on  the  local  self — begins 
to  return  again.  This  is  not  to  say,  of  course,  that  the 
excursus  in  the  second  stage  has  been  a  loss  and  a  defect. 
On  the  contrary,  it  means  that  the  Return  is  a  bringing 
of  all  that  has  been  gained  during  the  period  of  exile  (all 
sorts  of  mental  and  technical  knowledge  and  skill,  emotional 
developments,  finesse  and  adaptability  of  mind)  back 
into  harmony  with  the  Whole.  It  means  ultimately  a 
great  gain.  The  Man,  perfected,  comes  back  to  a  vastly 
extended  harmony.  He  enters  again  into  a  real  under¬ 
standing  and  confidential  relationship  with  his  physical 
body  and  with  the  body  of  the  society  in  which  he  dwells 
- — from  both  of  which  he  has  been  sadly  divorced  ;  and  he 
takes  up  again  the  broken  thread  of  the  Cosmic  Life. 

Everyone  has  noticed  the  extraordinary  consent  sometimes 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


251 


observable  among  the  members  of  an  animal  community — 
how  a  flock  of  500  birds  (e.g.  starlings)  will  suddenly  change 
its  direction  of  flight — the  light  on  the  wings  shifting  in¬ 
stantaneously,  as  if  the  impulse  to  veer  came  to  all  at  the  same 
identical  moment ;  or  how  bees  will  swarm  or  otherwise 
act  with  one  accord,  or  migrating  creatures  (lemmings, 
deer,  gossamer  spiders,  winged  ants)  the  same.  Whatever 
explanation  of  these  facts  we  favour — whether  the  possession 
of  swifter  and  finer  means  of  external  communication  than 
we  can  perceive,  or  whether  a  common  and  inner  sensitivity 
to  the  genius  of  the  Tribe  (the  “  Spirit  of  the  Hive  ”)  or 
to  the  promptings  of  great  Nature  around — in  any  case 
these  facts  of  animal  life  appear  to  throw  light  on  the 
possibilities  of  an  accord  and  consent  among  the  members 
of  emancipated  humanity,  such  as  we  little  dream  of  now, 
and  seem  to  bid  us  have  good  hope  for  the  future. 

It  is  here,  perhaps,  that  the  ancient  worship  of  the  Lingam 
comes  in.  The  word  itself  is  apparently  connected  with 
our  word  *  link/  and  has  originally  the  same  meaning.1 
It  is  the  link  between  the  generations.  Beginning  with 
the  worship  of  the  physical  Race-life,  the  course  of  psy¬ 
chologic  evolution  has  been  first  to  the  worship  of  the  Tribe 
(or  of  the  Totem  which  represents  the  tribe)  ;  then  to  the 
worship  of  the  human-formed  God  of  the  tribe— the  God 
who  dies  and  rises  again  eternally,  as  the  tribe  passes  on 
eternal — though  its  members  perpetually  perish ;  then 
to  the  conception  of  an  undying  Saviour,  and  the  realiza¬ 
tion  and  distinct  experience  of  some  kind  of  Super-con¬ 
sciousness  which  does  certainly  reside,  more  or  less  hidden, 
in  the  deeps  of  the  mind,  and  has  been  waiting  through  the 
ages  for  its  disclosure  and  recognition.  Then  again  to  the 
recognition  that  in  the  sacrifices,  the  Slayer  and  the  Slain 
are  one — the  strange  and  profoundly  mystic  perception 
that  the  God  and  the  Victim  are  in  essence  the  same — the 
dedication  of  ‘  Himself  to  Himself  ’ ;  2  and  simultaneously 
1  See  Sanskrit  Dictionary.  2  See  Ch.  VIII,  supra. 


252  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


with  this  the  interpretation  of  the  Eucharist  as  meaning, 
even  for  the  individual,  the  participation  in  Eternal  Life — 
the  continuing  life  of  the  Tribe,  or  ultimately  of  Humanity.1 
The  Tribal  order  rises  to  Humanity  ;  love  ascends  from  the 
lingam  to  yogam,  from  physical  union  alone  to  the  union 
with  the  Whole — which  of  course  includes  physical  and  all 
other  kinds  of  union.  No  wonder  that  the  good  St.  Paul, 
witnessing  that  extraordinary  whirlpool  of  beliefs  and  prac¬ 
tices,  new  and  old,  there  in  the  first  century  a.d. — the 
unabashed  adoration  of  sex  side  by  side  with  the  transcen¬ 
dental  devotions  of  the  Vedic  sages  and  the  Gnostics — became 
somewhat  confused  himself  and  even  a  little  violent,  scolding 
his  disciples  (i  Cor.  x.  21)  for  their  undiscriminating  accep¬ 
tance,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  of  things  utterly  alien  and 
antagonistic.  “Ye  cannot  drink  the  cup  of  the  Lord 
and  the  cup  of  devils  :  ye  cannot  be  partakers  of  the  Lord's 
table  and  the  table  of  devils." 

Every  careful  reader  has  noticed  the  confusedness  of 
Paul's  mind  and  arguments.  Even  taking  only  those 
Epistles  (Galatians,  Romans  and  Corinthians)  which  the 
critics  assign  to  his  pen,  the  thing  is  observable — and  some 
learned  Germans  even  speak  of  two  Pauls.2  But  also  the 
thing  is  quite  natural.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Paul  of  Tarsus,  a  Jew  brought  up  in  the  strictest  sect  of 
the  Pharisees,  did  at  some  time  fall  deeply  under  the  influence 
of  Greek  thought,  and  quite  possibly  became  an  initiate 


1  There  are  many  indications  in  literature — in  prophetic  or  poetic 
form — of  this  awareness  and  distinct  conviction  of  an  eternal  life, 
reached  through  love  and  an  inner  sense  of  union  with  others  and 
with  humanity  at  large  ;  indications  which  bear  the  mark  of  absolute 
genuineness  and  sincerity  of  feeling.  See,  for  instance.  Whitman’s 
poem.  To  the  Garden  the  World  ( Leaves  of  Grass,  complete 
edition,  p.  79).  But  an  eternal  life  of  the  third  order  ;  not,  thank 
heaven  !  an  eternity  of  the  meddling  and  muddling  self-conscious 
Intellect  ! 

2  “Die  Mysterien-anschauungen,  die  bei  Paulus  im  Hintergrunde 
stehen,  drangen  sich  in  dem  sogenannten  Deuteropaulinismus  machtig 
vor  ’’  (Reitzenstein) 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES 


253 


in  the  Mysteries.  It  would  be  difficult  otherwise  to  account 
for  his  constant  use  of  the  Mystery-language.  Reitzenstein 
says  (p.  59)  :  “  The  hellenistic  religious  literature  must  have 
been  read  by  him  ;  he  uses  its  terms,  and  is  saturated  with 
its  thoughts  (see  Rom.  vi.  1-14).”  And  this  conjoined  with 
his  Jewish  experience  gave  him  creative  power.  “  A  great 
deal  in  his  sentiment  and  thought  may  have  remained 
Jewish,  but  to  his  Hellenism  he  was  indebted  for  his  love 
of  freedom  and  his  firm  belief  in  his  apostleship.”  He 
adopts  terms  (like  crapiciKog,  \pv\uc6g  and  TTv^vpanKog)  1 
which  were  in  use  among  the  hellenistic  sects  of  the  time  ; 
and  he  writes,  as  in  Romans  vi.  4,  5,  about  being  “  buried  ” 
with  Christ  or  “  planted  ”  in  the  likeness  of  his  death,  in 
words  which  might  well  have  been  used  (with  change  of 
the  name)  by  a  follower  of  Attis  or  Osiris  after  witnessing 
the  corresponding  ‘  mysteries  *  ;  certainly  the  allusion  to 
these  ancient  deities  would  have  been  understood  by  every 
religionist  of  that  day.  These  few  points  are  sufficient 
to  accentuate  the  two  elements  in  Paul,  the  Jewish  and 
the  Greek,  and  to  explain  (so  far)  the  seeming  confusion 
in  his  utterances.  Further  it  is  interesting  to  note — as 
showing  the  pagan  influences  in  the  N.T.  writings — the 
degree  to  which  the  Epistle  to  Philemon  (ascribed  to  Paul) 
is  full — short  as  it  is — of  expressions  like  prisoner  of  the 
Lord,  fellow  soldier,  captive  or  bondman ,2 3  which  were  so 
common  at  the  time  as  to  be  almost  a  cant  in  Mithraism  and 
the  allied  cults.  In  1  Peter  ii.  2  3  we  have  the  verse  “  As 
newborn  babes,  desire  ye  the  sincere  milk  of  the  word, 
that  ye  may  grow  thereby.”  And  again  we  may  say  that 
no  one  in  that  day  could  mistake  the  reference  herein 
contained  to  old  initiation  ceremonies  and  the  new  birth 
(as  described  in  Chapter  VIII  above),  for  indeed  milk  was 

1  Remindful  of  our  Three  Stages  :  the  Animal,  the  Self-conscious, 
and  the  Cosmic. 

2  decrpiog,  (rrpaTuorrjg ,  dovXog. 

3  See  also  1  Cor.  iii.  2. 


254  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

the  well-known  diet  of  the  novice  in  the  Isis  mysteries,  as 
well  as  (in  some  savage  tribes)  of  the  Medicine-man  when 
practising  his  calling. 

And  here  too  Democracy  comes  in— strangely  fore¬ 
boded  from  the  first  in  all  this  matter.1  Not  only  does 
the  Third  Stage  bring  illumination,  intuitive  understanding 
of  processes  in  Nature  and  Humanity,  sympathy  with  the 
animals,  artistic  capacity,  and  so  forth,  but  it  necessarily 
brings  a  new  Order  of  Society.  A  preposterous — one  may 
almost  say  a  hideous — social  Age  is  surely  drawing  to  its  end. 
The  debacle  we  are  witnessing  to-day  all  over  Europe  (in¬ 
cluding  the  British  Islands),  the  break-up  of  old  institutions, 
the  generally  materialistic  outlook  on  life,  the  coming  to 
the  surface  of  huge  masses  of  diseased  and  fatuous  popula¬ 
tions,  the  scum  and  dregs  created  by  the  past  order,  all 
point  to  the  End  of  a  Dispensation.  Protestantism  and 
Commercialism,  in  the  two  fields  of  religion  and  daily  life 
have,  as  I  have  indicated  before,  been  occupied  in  concen¬ 
trating  the  mind  of  each  man  solely  on  his  own  welfare, 
the  salvation  of  his  own  soul  or  body.  These  two  forces 
have  therefore  been  disruptive  to  the  last  degree  ;  they  mark 
the  culmination  of  the  Self-conscious  Age — a  culmination  in 
War,  Greed,  Materialism,  and  the  general  principle  of 
Devil-take-the-hindmost — and  the  clearing  of  the  ground 
for  the  new  order  which  is  to  come.  So  there  is  hope  for 
the  human  race.  Its  evolution  is  not  all  a  mere  formless 
craze  and  jumble.  There  is  an  inner  necessity  by  which 
Humanity  unfolds  from  one  degree  or  plane  of  consciousness 
to  another.  And  if  there  has  been  a  great  *  Fall  *  or  Lapse 
into  conflict  and  disease  and  *  sin  ’  and  misery,  occupying 
the  major  part  of  the  Historical  period  hitherto,  we  see 
that  this  period  is  only  brief,  so  to  speak,  in  comparison 
with  the  whole  curve  of  growth  and  expansion.  We  see 
also  that,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  belief  in  a  state  of  salva- 

1  See  the  germs  of  Democracy  in  the  yoga  teaching  of  the  Hindus 
and  in  the  Upanishads,  the  Bhagavat  Gita,  and  other  books. 


THE  ANCIENT  MYSTERIES  255 

tion  or  deliverance  has  in  the  past  ages  never  left  itself 
quite  without  a  witness  in  the  creeds  and  rituals  and  poems 
and  prophecies  of  mankind.  Art,  in  some  form  or  other, 
as  an  activity  or  inspiration  dating  not  from  the  conscious 
Intellect,  but  from  deeper  regions  of  sub-conscious  feeling 
and  intuition,  has  continually  come  to  us  as  a  message 
from  and  an  evidence  of  the  Third  stage  or  state,  and  as 
a  promise  of  its  more  complete  realisation  under  other 
conditions. 

Through  the  long  night-time  where  the  Nations  wander 
From  Eden  past  to  Paradise  to  be, 

Art’s  sacred  flowers,  like  fair  stars  shining  yonder. 

Alone  illumine  Life’s  obscurity. 

O  gracious  Artists,  out  of  your  deep  hearts 

’Tis  some  great  Sun,  I  doubt,  by  men  unguessed, 

Whose  rays  come  struggling  thus,  in  slender  darts, 

To  shadow  what  Is,  till  Time  shall  manifest. 

With  the  Cosmic  stage  comes  also  necessarily  the  re¬ 
habilitation  of  the  whole  of  Society  in  one  fellowship  (the 
true  Democracy).  Not  the  rule  or  domination  of  one 
class  or  caste — as  of  the  Intellectual,  the  Pious,  the  Com¬ 
mercial  or  the  Military — but  the  fusion  or  at  least  consen¬ 
taneous  organisation  of  all  (as  in  the  corresponding  functions 
of  the  human  Body),  Class  rule  has  been  the  mark  of  that 
second  period  of  human  evolution,  and  has  inevitably 
given  birth  during  that  period  to  wars  and  self-aggrandise¬ 
ments  of  classes  and  sections,  and  their  consequent  greeds 
and  tyrannies  over  other  classes  and  sections.  It  is  not 
found  in  the  primitive  human  tribes  and  societies;  and 
will  not  be  found  in  the  final  forms  of  human  association. 
The  liberated  and  emancipated  Man  passes  unconstrained 
and  unconstraining  through  all  grades  and  planes  of  human 
fellowship,  equal  and  undisturbed,  and  never  leaving  his 
true  home  and  abiding  place  in  the  heart  of  all.  Equally 
necessarily  with  the  rehabilitation  of  Society  as  an  entirety 


256  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


will  follow  the  rehabilitation  of  the  entire  physical  body  in 
each  member  of  Society.  We  have  spoken  already  of 
Nakedness  :  its  meaning  and  likely  extent  of  adoption 
(Ch.  XII,  pp.  196-7).  The  idea  that  the  head  and  the 
hands  are  the  only  seemly  and  presentable  members  of 
the  organism,  and  that  the  other  members  are  unworthy 
and  indecent,  is  obviously  as  onesided  and  lopsided  as 
that  which  honours  certain  classes  in  the  commonwealth 
and  despises  others.  Why  should  the  head  brag  of  its 
ascendancy  and  domination,  and  the  heart  be  smothered 
up  and  hidden  ?  It  will  only  be  a  life  far  more  in  the 
open  air  than  that  which  we  lead  at  present,  which  will 
restore  the  balance  and  ultimately  bring  us  back  to  sanity 
and  health. 


XVI 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

vVe  have  dealt  with  the  Genesis  of  Christianity  ;  we  now 
:ome  to  its  Exodus.  For  that  Christianity  can  continue 
o  hold  the  field  of  Religion  in  the  Western  World  is  neither 
)robable  nor  desirable.  It  is  true,  as  I  have  remarked  already, 
hat  there  is  a  certain  trouble  about  defining  what  we  mean 
>y  “  Christianity  ”  similar  to  that  about  the  word  “  Civilisa- 
i°n.”  If  we  select  out  of  the  great  mass  of  doctrines  and 
ites  favoured  by  the  various  Christian  Churches  just  those 
riiich  commend  themselves  to  the  most  modern  and  humane 
nd  rational  human  mind  and  choose  to  call  that  resulting 
but  rather  small)  body  of  belief  and  practice  ‘  Christianity  * 
ye  are,  of  course,  entitled  to  do  so,  and  to  hope  (as  we  do 
tope)  that  this  residuum  will  survive  and  go  forward  into 
he  future.  But  this  sort  of  proceeding  is  hardly  fair  and 
ertainly  not  logical.  It  enables  Christianity  to  pose  as 
n  angel  of  light  while  at  the  same  time  keeping  discreetly 
ut  of  sight  all  its  own  abominations  and  deeds  of  darkness, 
die  Church — which  began  its  career  by  destroying,  dis¬ 
orting  and  denying  the  pagan  sources  from  which  it  sprang  ; 
riiose  bishops  and  other  ecclesiastics  assassinated  each 
ther  in  their  theological  rancour  “  of  wild  beasts,”  which 
ncouraged  the  wicked  folly  of  the  Crusades — especially 
he  Children’s  Crusades — and  the  shameful  murders  of 
he  Manicheans,  the  Albigenses,  and  the  Huguenots  ;  which 

17  257 


258  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


burned  at  the  stake  thousands  and  thousands  of  poor 
‘  witches  ’  and  ‘  heretics  ’  ;  which  has  hardly  ever  spoken 
a  generous  word  in  favour  or  defence  of  the  animals  ;  which 
in  modern  times  has  supported  vivisection  as  against  the 
latter,  Capitalism  and  Commercialism  as  against  the  poorer 
classes  of  mankind  ;  and  whose  priests  in  the  forms  of  its 
various  sects,  Greek  or  Catholic,  Lutheran  or  Protestant, 
have  in  these  last  days  rushed  forth  to  urge  the  nations  to 
slaughter  each  other  with  every  diabolical  device  of  Science, 
and  to  glorify  the  war-cry  of  Patriotism  in  defiance  of  the 
principle  of  universal  Brotherhood — such  a  Church  can 
hardly  claim  to  have  established  the  angelic  character 
of  its  mission  among  mankind  !  And  if  it  be  said — as  it 
often  is  said  :  “  Oh  !  but  you  must  go  back  to  the  genuine 
article,  and  the  Church’s  real  origin  and  one  foundation 
in  the  person  and  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,”  then  indeed 
you  come  back  to  the  point  which  this  book,  as  above, 
enforces  :  namely,  that  as  to  the  person  of  Jesus,  there  is 
no  certainty  at  all  that  he  ever  existed  ;  and  as  to  the  teaching 
credited  to  him,  it  is  certain  that  that  comes  down  from  a 
period  long  anterior  to  ‘  Christianity  '  and  is  part  of  what 
may  justly  be  called  a  very  ancient  World-religion.  So,  as 
in  the  case  of  ‘  Civilisation,’  we  are  compelled  to  see  that 
it  is  useless  to  apply  the  word  to  some  ideal  state  of  affairs 
or  doctrine  (an  ideal  by  no  means  the  same  in  all  people’s 
minds,  or  in  all  localities  and  times),  but  that  the  only 
reasonable  thing  to  do  is  to  apply  it  in  each  case  to  a  historical 
period.  In  the  case  of  Christianity  the  historical  period 
has  lasted  nearly  2,000  years,  and,  as  I  say,  we  can  hardly 
expect  or  wish  that  it  should  last  much  longer. 

The  very  thorough  and  careful  investigation  of  religious 
origins  which  has  been  made  during  late  years  by  a  great 
number  of  students  and  observers  undoubtedly  tends  to  show 
that  there  has  been  something  like  a  great  World-religion 
coming  down  the  centuries  from  the  remotest  times  and 
gradually  expanding  and  branching  as  it  has  come — that 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  259 

is  to  say  that  the  similarity  (in  essence  though  not  always 
in  external  detail)  between  the  creeds  and  rituals  of  widely 
sundered  tribes  and  peoples  is  so  great  as  to  justify  the  view 

advanced  in  the  present  volume — that  these  creeds  and 
rituals  are  the  necessary  outgrowths  of  human  psychology, 
slowly  evolving,  and  that  consequently  they  have  a  common 
origin  and  in  their  various  forms  a  common  expression. 
Of  this  great  World-religion,  so  coming  down,  Christianity 
is  undoubtedly  a  branch,  and  an  important  branch.  But 
there  have  been  important  branches  before  *  and  while 
it  may  be  tiue  that  Christianity  emphasizes  some  points 
which  may  have  been  overlooked  or  neglected  in  the  Vedic 
teachings  or  in  Buddhism,  or  in  the  Persian  and  Egyptian 
and  Syrian  cults,  or  in  Mahommedanism,  and  so  forth,  it 
is  also  equally  true  that  Christianity  has  itself  overlooked 
or  neglected  valuable  points  in  these  religions.  It  has,  in 
fact,  the  defects  of  its  qualities.  If  the  World-religion  is 
like  a  great  tree,  one  cannot  expect  or  desire  that  all  its 
branches  should  be  directed  towards  the  same  point  of 
the  compass. 

Reinach,  whose  studies  of  religious  origins  are  always 
nteresting  and  characterised  by  a  certain  Gallic  grace 
md  nettete,  though  with  a  somewhat  Jewish  non-perception 
)f  the  mystic  element  in  life,  defines  Religion  as  a  com- 
rination  of  animism  and  scruples.  This  is  good  in  a  way, 
)ecause  it  gives  the  two  aspects  of  the  subject :  the  inner,’ 
tnimism,  consisting  of  the  sense  of  contact  with  more  or 
ess  intelligent  beings  moving  in  Nature  ;  and  the  outer, 
onsisting  in  scruples  or  taboos.  The  one  aspect  shows 
he  feeling  which  inspires  religion,  the  other,  the  checks 
nd  limitations  which  define  it  and  give  birth  to  ritual. 
*ut  like  most  anthropologists  he  (Reinach)  is  a  little  too 
'atronising  towards  the  “  poor  Indian  with  untutored 
rind.  He  is  sorry  for  people  so  foolish  as  to  be  animistic 
i  their  outlook,  and  he  is  always  careful  to  point  out  that 
•le  sciuples  and  taboos  were  quite  senseless  in  their  origin. 


260  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

though  occasionally  (by  accident)  they  turned  out  useful. 
Yet — as  I  have  said  before — Animism  is  a  perfectly  sensible, 
logical  and  necessary  attitude  of  the  human  mind.  It  is 
a  necessary  attribute  of  man’s  psychical  nature,  by  which 
he  projects  into  the  great  World  around  him  the  image 
of  his  own  mind.  When  that  mind  is  in  a  very  primitive, 
inchoate,  and  fragmentary  condition,  the  images  so  pro¬ 
jected  are  those  of  fragmentary  intelligences  (‘  spirits,’ 
gnomes,  etc. — the  age  of  magic)  ;  when  the  mind  rises 
to  distinct  consciousness  of  itself  the  reflexions  of  it  are 
anthropomorphic  ‘  gods  ’  ;  when  finally  it  reaches  the 
universal  or  cosmic  state  it  perceives  the  presence  of  a 
universal  Being  behind  all  phenomena — which  Being  is 
indeed  itself — “  Himself  to  Himself.”  If  you  like  you 
may  call  the  whole  process  by  the  name  of  Animism.  It 
is  perfectly  sensible  throughout.  The  only  proviso  is 
that  you  should  also  be  sensible,  and  distinguish  the  differ¬ 
ent  stages  in  the  process. 

Jane  Harrison  makes  considerable  efforts  to  show  that 
Religion  is  primarily  a  reflection  of  the  social  Conscience 
(see  Themis ,  pp.  482-92) — that  is,  that  the  sense  in 
Man  of  a  "  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness  ”  outside 
(and  also  inside)  him  is  derived  from  his  feeling  of  con¬ 
tinuity  with  the  Tribe  and  his  instinctive  obedience  to  its 
behests,  confirmed  by  ages  of  collective  habit  and  experi¬ 
ence.  He  cannot  in  fact  sever  the  navel-string  which 
connects  him  with  his  tribal  Mother,  even  though  he 
desires  to  do  so.  And  no  doubt  this  view  of  the  origin 
of  Religion  is  perfectly  correct.  But  it  must  be  pointed 
out  that  it  does  not  by  any  means  exclude  the  view  that 
religion  derives  also  from  an  Animism  by  which  man 
recognises  in  general  Nature  his  foster-mother  and  feels 
himself  in  closest  touch  with  her.  Which  may  have  come 
first,  the  Social  affiliation  or  the  Nature  affiliation,  I 
leave  to  the  professors  to  determine.  The  term  Animism 
may,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  be  quite  well  applied  to  the  social 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  261 


affiliation,  for  the  latter  is  evidently  only  a  case  in  which 
the  individual  projects  his  own  degree  of  consciousness 
into  the  human  group  around  him  instead  of  into  the 
animals  or  the  trees,  but  it  is  a  case  of  which  the  justice 
is  so  obvious  that  the  modern  man  can  intellectually  seize 
and  understand  it,  and  consequently  he  does  not  tar  it 
with  the  ‘  animistic  ’  brush. 

And  Miss  Harrison,  it  must  be  noticed,  does,  in  other 
passages  of  the  same  book  (see  Themis,  pp.  68,  69),  admit 
that  Religion  has  its  origin  not  only  from  unity  with  the 
Tribe  but  from  the  sense  of  affiliation  to  Nature — the 
sense  of  “  a  world  of  unseen  power  lying  behind  the  visible 
universe,  a  world  which  is  the  sphere,  as  will  be  seen,  of 
magical  activity  and  the  medium  of  mysticism.  The 
mystical  element,  the  oneness  and  continuousness  comes 
out  very  clearly  in  the  notion  of  Wakonda  among  the  Sioux 
Indians.  .  .  .  The  Omahas  regarded  all  animate  and  in¬ 
animate  forms,  all  phenomena,  as  pervaded  by  a  common 
life,  which  was  continuous  and  similar  to  the  will-power 
they  were  conscious  of  in  themselves.  This  mysterious 
power  in  all  things  they  called  Wakonda,  and  through 
it  all  things  were  related  to  man,  and  to  each  other.  In 
the  idea  of  the  continuity  of  life,  a  relation  was  maintained 
between  the  seen  and  the  unseen,  the  dead  and  the  living, 
and  also  between  the  fragment  of  anything  and  its  entirety.” 
Thus  our  general  position  is  confirmed,  that  Religion  in 
its  origin  has  been  inspired  by  a  deep  instinctive  conviction 
or  actual  sense  of  continuity  with  a  being  or  beings  in  the 
world  around,  while  it  has  derived  its  form  and  ritual  by 
slow  degrees  from  a  vast  number  of  taboos,  generated  in 
the  first  instance  chiefly  by  superstitious  fears,  but  gradually 
with  the  growth  of  reason  and  observation  becoming 
simplified  and  rationalized  into  forms  of  use.  On  the  one 
side  there  has  been  the  positive  impulse — of  mere  animal 
Desire  and  the  animal  urge  of  self-expression ;  on  the 
other  there  has  been  the  negative  force  of  Fear  based 


262  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


on  ignorance — the  latter  continually  carving,  moulding  and 
shaping  the  former.  According  to  this  an  organised  study  and 
classification  of  taboos  might  yield  some  interesting  results  ; 
because  indeed  it  would  throw  light  on  the  earliest  forms  of 
both  religion  and  science.  It  would  be  seen  that  some  taboos, 
like  those  of  contact  (say  with  a  menstruous  woman,  or 
a  mother-in-law,  or  a  lightning-struck  tree)  had  an  obvious 
basis  of  observation,  justifiable  but  very  crude ;  while 
others,  like  the  taboo  against  harming  an  enemy  who 
had  contracted  blood-friendship  with  one  of  your  own 
tribe,  or  against  giving  decent  burial  to  a  murderer,  were 
equally  rough  and  rude  expressions  or  indications  of  the 
growing  moral  sentiment  of  mankind.  All  the  same  there 
would  be  left,  in  any  case,  a  large  residuum  of  taboos 
which  could  only  be  judged  as  senseless,  and  the  mere 
rubbish  of  the  savage  mind. 

So  much  for  the  first  origins  of  the  World-religion  ; 
and  I  think  enough  has  been  said  in  the  various  chapters 
of  this  book  to  show  that  the  same  general  process  has 
obtained  throughout.  Man,  like  the  animals,  began  with 
this  deep,  subconscious  sense  of  unity  with  surrounding 
Nature.  When  this  became  (in  Man)  fairly  conscious,  it  led 
to  Magic  and  Totemism.  More  conscious,  and  it  branched, 
on  the  one  hand,  into  figures  of  Gods  and  definite  forms 
of  Creeds,  on  the  other  into  elaborate  Scientific  Theories — - 
the  latter  based  on  a  strong  intellectual  belief  in  Unity, 
but  fervently  denying  any  ‘  anthropomorphic  '  or  ‘  ani¬ 
mistic  '  sense  of  that  unity.  Finally,  it  seems  that  we 
are  now  on  the  edge  of  a  further  stage  when  the  theories 
and  the  creeds,  scientific  and  religious,  are  on  the  verge 
of  collapsing,  but  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  the  sense  and 
the  perception  of  Unity — the  real  content  of  the  whole 
process — not  only  undestroyed,  but  immensely  heightened 
and  illuminated.  Meanwhile  the  taboos — of  which 
there  remain  some  still,  both  religious  and  scientific- 
have  been  gradually  breaking  up  and  merging  them 


•rr  If  -  •  - 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  268 


selves  into  a  reasonable  and  humane  order  of  life  and 
philosophy. 

I  have  said  that  out.  of  this  World-religion  Christianity 
really  sprang.  It  is  evident  now  that  the  time  has  arrived 
when  it  must  either  acknowledge  its  source  and  frankly 
i  endeavour  to  affiliate  itself  to  the  same,  or  failing  that 
must  perish.  In  the  first  case  it  will  probably  have  to 
change  its  name  ;  in  the  second  the  question  of  its  name 
‘  will  interest  it  no  more.5 

With  regard  to  the  first  of  these  alternatives,  I  might 
venture — though  with  due  diffidence — to  make  a  few 
suggestions.  Why  should  we  not  have — instead  of  a 
Holy  Roman  Church — a  Holy  Human  Church,  rehabilitating 
the  ancient  symbols  and  rituals,  a  Christianity  (if  you 
still  desire  to  call  it  so)  frankly  and  gladly  acknowledging 
its  own  sources  ?  This  seems  a  reasonable  and  even  feasible 
proposition.  If  such  a  church  wished  to  celebrate  a  Mass 
or  Communion  or  Eucharist  it  would  have  a  great  variety 
of  rites  and  customs  of  that  kind  to  select  from  ;  those  that 
were  not  appropriate  for  use  in  our  times  or  were  connected 
with  the  worship  of  strange  gods  need  not  be  rejected  or 
condemned,  but  could  still  be  commented  on  and  explained 
as  approaches  to  the  same  idea — the  idea  of  dedication 
to  the  Common  Life,  and  of  reinvigoration  in  the  partaking 
of  it.  If  the  Church  wished  to  celebrate  the  Crucifixion 
or  betrayal  of  its  Founder,  a  hundred  instances  of  such 
celebrations  would  be  to  hand,  and  still  the  thought  that 
has  underlain  such  celebrations  since  the  beginning  of  the 
world  could  easily  be  disentangled  and  presented  in  con¬ 
crete  form  anew.  In  the  light  of  such  teaching  expiessions 
like  “  I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth  55  would  be  traced 
to  their  origin,  and  men  would  understand  that  notwith¬ 
standing  the  mass  of  rubbish,  cant  and  humbug  which  has 
collected  round  them  they  really  do  mean  something  and 
represent  the  age-long  instinct  of  Humanity  feeling  its  way 
towards  a  more  extended  revelation,  a  new  order  of  being, 


264  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


a  third  stage  of  consciousness  and  illumination.  In  such 
a  Church  or  religious  organisation  every  quality  of  human 
nature  would  have  to  be  represented,  ever)/  practice  and 
custom  allowed  for  and  its  place  accorded — the  magical 
and  astronomical  meanings,  the  rites  connected  with  sun- 
worship,  or  with  sex,  or  with  the  worship  of  animals  ;  the 
consecration  of  corn  and  wine  and  other  products  of  the 
ground,  initiations,  sacrifices,  and  so  forth — all  (if  indeed  it 
claimed  to  be  a  World-religion)  would  have  to  be  represented 
and  recognised.  For  they  all  have  their  long  human  origin 
and  descent  in  and  through  the  pagan  creeds,  and  they  all 
have  penetrated  into  and  become  embodied  to  some  degree 
in  Christianity.  Christianity  therefore,  as  I  say,  must 
either  now  come  frankly  forward  and,  acknowledging  its 
parentage  from  the  great  Order  of  the  past,  seek  to  re¬ 
habilitate  that  and  carry  mankind  one  step  forward  in  the 
path  of  evolution — or  else  it  must  perish.  There  is  no 
other  alternative.1 

Let  me  give  an  instance  of  how  a  fragment  of  ancient 
ritual  which  has  survived  from  the  far  Past  and  is  still 
celebrated,  but  with  little  intelligence  or  understanding, 
in  the  Catholic  Church  of  to-day,  might  be  adopted  in  such 
a  Church  as  I  have  spoken  of,  interpreted,  and  made  eloquent 
of  meaning  to  modern  humanity.  When  I  was  in  Ceylon 
nearly  30  years  ago  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  witness  a 
night-festival  in  a  Hindu  Temple — the  great  festival  of 
Taipusam,  which  takes  place  every  year  in  January.  Of 
course,  it  was  full  moon,  and  great  was  the  blowing  up 
of  trumpets  in  the  huge  courtyard  of  the  Temple.  The 
moon  shone  down  above  from  among  the  fronds  of  tall 
coco-palms,  on  a  dense  crowd  of  native  worshipers — men 
and  a  few  women — the  men  for  the  most  part  clad  in  little 


1  Comte  in  founding  his  philosophy  of  Positivism  seems  to  have 
had  in  view  some  such  Holy  Human  Church,  but  he  succeeded  in 
making  it  all  so  profoundly  dull  that  it  never  flourished,  The  seed 
of  Life  was  not  in  it. 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  265 


more  than  a  loin-cloth,  the  women  picturesque  in  their 
coloured  saris  and  jewelled  ear  and  nose  rings.  The  images 
of  Siva  and  two  other  gods  were  carried  in  procession  round 
and  round  the  temple — three  or  four  times  ;  nautch  girls 
danced  before  the  images,  musicians,  blowing  horns  and  huge 
shells,  or  piping  on  flageolets  or  beating  tom-toms,  accom¬ 
panied  them.  The  crowd  carrying  torches  or  high  crates 
with  flaming  coco-nuts,  walked  or  rather  danced  along  on 
each  side,  elated  and  excited  with  the  sense  of  the  present 
divinity,  yet  pleasantly  free  from  any  abject  awe.  The 
whole  thing  indeed  reminded  one  of  some  bas-relief  of  a 
Bacchanalian  procession  carved  on  a  Greek  sarcophagus 
— and  especially  so  in  its  hilarity  and  suggestion  of  friendly 
intimacy  with  the  god.  There  were  singing  of  hymns  and 
the  floating  of  the  chief  actors  on  a  raft  round  a  sacred 
lake.  And  then  came  the  final  Act.  Siva,  or  his  image, 
very  weighty  and  borne  on  the  shoulders  of  strong  men, 
was  carried  into  the  first  chamber  or  hall  of  the  Temple 
and  placed  on  an  altar  with  a  curtain  hanging  in  front. 
The  crowd  followed  with  a  rush  ;  and  then  there  was  more 
music,  recital  of  hymns,  and  reading  from  sacred  books. 
From  where  we  stood  we  could  see  the  rite  which  was  per¬ 
formed  behind  the  curtain.  Two  five-branched  candle¬ 
sticks  were  lighted  ;  and  the  manner  of  their  lighting  was 
as  follows.  Each  branch  ended  in  a  little  cup,  and  in  the 
cups  five  pieces  of  camphor  were  placed,  all  approximately 
equal  in  size.  After  offerings  had  been  made,  of  fruit, 
flowers  and  sandalwood,  the  five  camphors  in  each  candlestick 
were  lighted.  As  the  camphor  flames  burned  out  the  music 
became  more  wild  and  exciting,  and  then  at  the  moment 
of  their  extinction  the  curtains  were  drawn  aside  and  the 
congregation  outside  suddenly  beheld  the  god  revealed 
and  in  a  blaze  of  light.  This  burning  of  camphor  was, 
like  other  things  in  the  service,  emblematic.  The  five 
lights  represent  the  five  senses.  Just  as  camphor  consumes 
itself  and  leaves  no  residue  behind,  so  should  the  five  senses, 


266  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


being  offered  to  the  god,  consume  themselves  and  disappear. 
When  this  is  done,  that  happens  in  the  soul  which  was 
now  figured  in  the  ritual — the  God  is  revealed  in  the  inner 
light.1 

We  are  familiar  with  this  parting  or  rending  of  the  veil. 
We  hear  of  it  in  the  Jewish  Temple,  and  in  the  Greek  and 
Egyptian  Mysteries.  It  had  a  mystically  religious,  and  also 
obviously  sexual,  signification.  It  occurs  here  and  there 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  ritual.  In  Spain,  some  ancient 
Catholic  ceremonials  are  kept  up  with  a  brilliance  and 
splendour  hardly  found  elsewhere  in  Europe.  In  the 
Cathedral  at  Seville  the  service  of  the  Passion,  carried 
out  on  Good  Friday  with  great  solemnity  and  accompanied 
with  fine  music,  culminates  on  the  Saturday  morning — 
i.e.  in  the  interval  between  the  Crucifixion  and  the  Resur¬ 
rection — in  a  spectacle  similar  to  that  described  in  Ceylon. 
A  rich  velvet-black  curtain  hangs  before  the  High  Altar.  At 
the  appropriate  moment  and  as  the  very  emotional  strains 
of  voices  and  instruments  reach  their  climax  in  the  “  Gloria 
in  Excelsis,”  the  curtain  with  a  sudden  burst  of  sound 
(thunder  and  the  ringing  of  all  the  bells)  is  rent  asunder, 
and  the  crucified  Jesus  is  seen  hanging  there  revealed  in 
a  halo  of  glory. 

There  is  also  held  at  Seville  Cathedral  and  before  the 
High  Altar  every  year,  the  very  curious  Dance  of  the  Seises 
(sixes),  performed  now  by  16  instead  of  (as  of  old)  by 
12  boys,  quaintly  dressed.  It  seems  to  be  a  survival  of 
some  very  ancient  ritual,  probably  astronomical,  in  which 
the  two  sets  of  six  represent  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac,  and 
is  celebrated  during  the  festivals  of  Corpus  Chrisii,  the 
Immaculate  Conception ,  and  the  Carnival. 

Numerous  instances  might  of  course  be  adduced  of  how 
a  Church  aspiring  to  be  a  real  Church  of  Humanity  might 
adopt  and  re-create  the  rituals  of  the  past  in  the  light  of 

1  For  a  more  detailed  account  of  this  Temple-festival,  see  Adam’s 
Peak  to  Elephanta  by  E.  Carpenter,  ch.  vii. 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  267 


a  modern  inspiration.  Indeed  the  difficulty  would  be 
to  limit  the  process,  for  every  ancient  ritual,  we  can  now 
see,  has  had  a  meaning  and  a  message,  and  it  would  be  a 
real  joy  to  disentangle  these  and  to  expose  the  profound 
solidarity  of  human  thought  and  aspiration  from  the  very 
dawn  of  civilisation  down  to  the  present  day.  Nor  would 
it  be  necessary  to  imagine  any  Act  of  Uniformity  or  dead 
level  of  ceremonial  in  the  matter.  Different  groups  might 
concentrate  on  different  phases  of  religious  thought  and 
practice.  The  only  necessity  would  be  that  they  should 
approach  the  subject  with  a  real  love  of  Humanity  in  their 
hearts  and  a  real  desire  to  come  into  touch  with  the  deep 
inner  life  and  mystic  growing-pains  of  the  souls  of  men  and 
women  in  all  ages.  In  this  direction  M.  Loisy  has  done 
noble  and  excellent  work  ;  but  the  dead  weight  and  selfish 
blinkerdom  of  the  Catholic  organisation  has  hampered  him 
to  that  degree  that  he  has  been  unable  to  get  justice  done 
to  his  liberalising  designs — or,  perhaps,  even  to  reveal 
the  full  extent  of  them.  And  the  same  difficulty  will 
remain.  On  the  one  hand  no  spiritual  movement  which 
does  not  take  up  the  attitude  of  a  World-religion  has  now 
in  this  age,  any  chance  of  success  ;  on  the  other,  all  the 
existing  Churches — whether  Roman  Catholic,  or  Greek,  or 
Protestant  or  Secularist — whether  Christian  or  Jewish  or 
Persian  or  Hindu — will  in  all  probability  adopt  the  same 
blind  and  blinkered  and  selfish  attitude  as  that  described 
above,  and  so  disqualify  themselves  for  the  great  role  of 
world-wide  emancipation,  which  some  religion  at  some  time 
will  certainly  have  to  play.  It  is  the  same  difficulty  which 
is  looming  large  in  modern  World-politics,  where  the  local 
selfishnesses  and  vainglorious  “  patriotisms  ”  of  the  Nations 
are  sadly  impeding  and  obstructing  the  development  of 
that  sense  of  Internationalism  and  Brotherhood  which  is 
the  clearly  indicated  form  of  the  future,  and  which  alone 
can  give  each  nation  deliverance  from  fear,  and  a  promise 
of  growth,  and  the  confident  assurance  of  power. 


268  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


I  say  that  Christianity  must  either  frankly  adopt  this 
generous  attitude  and  confess  itself  a  branch  of  the  great 
World-religion,  anxious  only  to  do  honour  to  its  source — 
or  else  it  must  perish  and  pass  away.  There  is  no  other 
alternative.  The  hour  of  its  Exodus  has  come.  It  may 
be,  of  course,  that  neither  the  Christian  Church  nor  any 
branch  of  it,  nor  any  other  religious  organisation,  will  step 
into  the  gap.  It  may  be — but  I  do  not  think  this  is  likely 
■ — that  the  time  of  rites  and  ceremonies  and  formal  creeds 
is  past,  and  churches  of  any  kind  will  be  no  more  needed 
in  the  world  :  not  likely,  I  say,  because  of  the  still  far 
backwardness  of  the  human  masses,  and  their  considerable 
dependence  yet  on  laws  and  forms  and  rituals.  Still,  if  it 
should  prove  that  that  age  of  dependence  is  really  approach¬ 
ing  its  end,  that  would  surely  be  a  matter  for  congratulation. 
It  would  mean  that  mankind  was  moving  into  a  knowledge 
of  the  reality  which  has  underlain  these  outer  shows — that 
it  was  coming  into  the  Third  stage  of  its  Consciousness. 
Having  found  this  there  would  be  no  need  for  it  to  dwell 
any  longer  in  the  land  of  superstitions  and  formulae.  It 
would  have  come  to  the  place  of  which  these  latter  are 
only  the  outlying  indications. 

It  may,  therefore,  happen — and  this  quite  independently 
of  the  growth  of  a  World-cult  such  as  I  have  described, 
though  by  no  means  in  antagonism  to  it — that  a  religious 
philosophy  or  Theosophy  might  develop  and  spread,  similar  to 
the  Gnanam  of  the  Hindus  or  the  Gnosis  of  the  pre-Christian 
sects,  which  would  become,  first  among  individuals  and 
afterwards  among  large  bodies  over  the  world,  the  religion 
of — or  perhaps  one  should  say  the  religious  approach  to 
the  Third  State.  Books  like  the  Upanishads  of  the  Vedic 
seers,  and  the  Bhagavat  Gita,  though  garbled  and  ob¬ 
scured  by  priestly  interferences  and  mystifications,  do 
undoubtedly  represent  and  give  expression  to  the  highest 
utterance  of  religious  experience  to  be  found  anywhere 
in  the  world.  They  are  indeed  the  manuals  of  human 


THE  EXODUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  269 

entrance  into  the  cosmic  state.  But  as  I  say,  and  as  has 
happened  in  the  case  of  other  sacred  books,  a  vast  deal 
of  rubbish  has  accreted  round  their  essential  teachings, 
and  has  to  be  cleared  away.  To  go  into  a  serious  explication 
of  the  meaning  of  these  books  would  be  far  too  large  an 
affair,  and  would  be  foreign  to  the  purpose  of  the  present 
volume  ;  but  I  have  in  the  Appendix  below  inserted  two 
papers,  (on  "  Rest  ”  and  “  The  Nature  of  the  Self  ”)  con¬ 
taining  the  substance  of  lectures  given  on  the  above  books. 
These  papers  or  lectures  are  couched  in  the  very  simplest 
language,  free  from  Sanskrit  terms  and  the  usual  ‘  jargon 
of  the  Schools/  and  may,  I  hope,  even  on  that  account 
be  of  use  in  familiarising  readers  who  are  not  specially 
students  with  the  ideas  and  mental  attitudes  of  the  cosmic 
state.  Non-differentiation  (Advaita  *)  is  the  root  attitude 

of  the  mind  inculcated.  ^ 

We  have  seen  that  there  has  been  an  age  of  non-differen¬ 
tiation  in  the  Past — non-differentiation  from  other  members 
of  the  Tribe,  from  the  Animals,  from  Nature  and  the  Spirit 
or  Spirits  of  nature  ;  why  should  there  not  arise  a  similar 
sense  of  non-differentiation  in  the  Future— similar  but  more 
extended,  more  intelligent  ?  Certainly  this  will  arrive,  m 
its  own  appointed  time.  There  will  be  a  surpassing  of  the 
bounds  of  separation  and  division.  There  will  be  a  surpassing 
of  all  Taboos.  We  have  seen  the  use  and  function  of  Taboos 
in  the  early  stages  of  Evolution  and  how  progress  and  growth 
have  been  very  much  a  matter  of  their  gradual  extinction 
and  assimilation  into  the  general  body  of  rational  thought 
and  feeling.  Unreasoning  and  idiotic  taboos  still  linger,  but 
they  grow  weaker.  A  new  Morality  will  come  which  will 
shake  itself  free  from  them.  The  sense  of  kinship  with 
the  animals  (as  in  the  old  rituals)*  will  be  restored;  the  sense 


Here  we  see  a  great  subtlety 
with  others  that  is  urged,  but 


1  The  word  means  “  not-two-ness. 
of  definition.  It  is  not  to  be  “  one  ” 

t02]The  record^of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  been  sadly  callous 
and  inhuman  in  this  matter  of  the  animals. 


270  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


of  kinship  with  all  the  races  of  mankind  will  grow  and 
become  consolidated  ;  the  sense  of  the  defilement  and  im¬ 
purity  of  the  human  body  will  (with  the  adoption  of  a 
generally  clean  and  wholesome  life)  pass  away  ;  and  the 
body  itself  will  come  to  be  regarded  more  as  a  collection 
of  shrines  in  which  the  gods  may  be  worshiped  and  less 
as  a  mere  organ  of  trivial  self -gratifications  ;  1  there  will 
be  no  form  of  Nature,  or  of  human  life  or  of  the  lesser 
creatures,  which  will  be  barred  from  the  approach  of  Man 
or  from  the  intimate  and  penetrating  invasion  of  his  spirit ; 
and  as  in  certain  ceremonies  and  after  honorable  toils  and 
labours  a  citizen  is  sometimes  received  into  the  community 
of  his  own  city,  so  the  emancipated  human  being  on  the 
completion  of  his  long  long  pilgrimage  on  Earth  will  be 
presented  with  the  Freedom  of  the  Universe. 


1  See  The  Art  of  Creation ,  by  E.  Carpenter. 


XVII 


CONCLUSION 

In  conclusion  there  does  not  seem  much  to  say>  except 
to  accentuate  certain  points  which  may  still  appear  doubtful 
or  capable  of  being  misunderstood. 

The  fact  that  the  main  argument  of  this  volume  is  along 
the  lines  of  psychological  evolution  will  no  doubt  com¬ 
mend  it  to  some,  while  on  the  other  hand  it  will  disci  edit 
the  book  to  others  whose  eyes,  being  fixed  on  purely  material 
causes,  can  see  no  impetus  in  History  except  through  these. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  there  is  not  the  least 
reason  for  separating  the  two  factors.  The  fact  that  psy¬ 
chologically  man  has  evolved  from  simple  consciousness 
to  self-consciousness,  and  is  now  in  process  of  evolution 
towards  another  and  more  extended  kind  of  consciousness, 
does  not  in  the  least  bar  the  simultaneous  appearance 
and  influence  of  material  evolution.  It  is  clear  indeed 
that  the  two  must  largely  go  together,  acting  and  reacting 
on  each  other.  Whatever  the  physical  conditions  of  the 
animal  brain  may  be  which  connect  themselves  with  simple 
(unreflected  and  unreflecting)  consciousness,  it  is  evident 
that  these  conditions — in  animals  and  primitive  man  - 
lasted  for  an  enormous  period,  before  the  distinct  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  individual  and  separate  self  arose.  This 
second  order  of  consciousness  seems  to  have  germinated 
at  or  about  the  same  period  as  the  discovery  of  the  use 

271 


272  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


of  Tools  (tools  of  stone,  copper,  bronze,  &c.),  the  adoption 
of  picture-writing  and  the  use  of  reflective  words  (like 
“  I  ”  and  “  Ihou  ”)  ;  and  it  led  on  to  the  appreciation  of 
gold  and  of  iron  with  their  ornamental  and  practical  values, 
the  accumulation  of  Property,  the  establishment  of  slavery 
of  various  kinds,  the  subjection  of  Women,  the  encourage¬ 
ment  of  luxury  and  self-indulgence,  the  growth  of  crowded 
cities  and  the  endless  conflicts  and  wars  so  resulting.  We 
can  see  plainly  that  the  incoming  of  the  self-motive  exercised 
a  direct  stimulus  on  the  pursuit  of  these  material  objects 
and  adaptations  ;  and  that  the  material  adaptations  in  their 
turn  did  largely  accentuate  the  self-motive  ;  but  to  insist 
that  the  real  explanation  of  the  whole  process  is  only  to 
be  found  along  one  channel — the  material  or  the  psychical 
— is  clearly  quite  unnecessary.  Those  who  understand 
that  all  matter  is  conscious  in  some  degree,  and  that  all 
consciousness  has  a  material  form  of  some  kind,  will  be  the 
first  to  admit  this. 

The  same  remarks  apply  to  the  Third  Stage.  We  can 
see  that  in  modern  times  the  huge  and  unlimited  powers 
of  production  by  machinery,  united  with  a  growing  tendency 
towards  intelligent  Birth-control,  are  preparing  the  way 
for  an  age  of  Communism  and  communal  Plenty  which 
will  inevitably  be  associated  (partly  as  cause  and  partly 
as  effect)  with  a  new  general  phase  of  consciousness,  in¬ 
volving  the  mitigation  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  the 
growth  of  intuitional  and  psychical  perception,  the  spread 
of  amity  and  solidarity,  the  disappearance  of  War,  and 
the  realisation  (in  degree)  of  the  Cosmic  life. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  difficulty  or  stumbling-block  to 
the  general  acceptance  of  the  belief  in  a  third  (or  ‘  Golden- 
Age  ’)  phase  of  human  evolution  is  the  obstinate  and  obdurate 
pre-judgment  that  the  passing  of  Humanity  out  of  the 
Second  stage  can  only  mean  the  entire  abandonment  of 
self-consciousness  ;  and  this,  people  say — and  quite  rightly 
—is  both  impossible  and  undesirable.  Throughout  the 


CONCLUSION 


273 


preceding  chapters  I  have  striven,  wherever  feasible,  to 
counter  this  misunderstanding— but  I  have  little  hope  of 
success  !  The  determination  of  the  world  to  misunderstand 
or  misinterpret  anything  a  little  new  or  unfamiliar  is  a 
thing  which  perhaps  only  an  author  can  duly  appreciate. 
But  while  it  is  clear  that  self-consciousness  originally  came 
into  being  through  a  process  of  alienation  and  exile  and 
fear  which  marked  it  with  the  Cain-like  brand  of  loneliness 
and  apartness,  it  is  equally  clear  that  to  think  of  that 
apartness  as  an  absolute  and  permanent  separation  is  an 
illusion,  since  no  being  can  really  continue  to  live  divorced 
from  the  source  of  its  life.  For  a  period  in  evolution  the 
self  took  on  this  illusive  form  in  consciousness,  as  of  an 
ignis  fatuus — the  form  of  a  being  sundered  from  all  other 
beings,  atomic,  lonely,  without  refuge,  surrounded  by 
dangers  and  struggling  for  itself  alone  and  for  its  own 
salvation  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  environment.  Perhaps 
some  such  terrible  imagination  was  necessary  at  first,  as 
it  were  to  start  Humanity  on  its  new  path.  But  it  had 
its  compensation,  for  the  sufferings  and  tortures,  mental 
and  bodily,  the  privations,  persecutions,  accusations, 
hatreds,  the  wars  and  conflicts— so  endured  by  millions  of 
individuals  and  whole  races — have  at  length  stamped  upon 
the  human  mind  a  sense  of  individual  responsibility  which 
otherwise  perhaps  would  never  have  emerged,  and  whose 
mark  can  never  now  be  effaced  ;  ultimately,  too,  these 
things  have  searched  our  inner  nature  to  its  very  depths 
and  exposed  its  bed-rock  foundation.  They  have  convinced 
us  that  this  idea  of  ultimate  separation  is  an  illusion,  and 
that  in  truth  we  are  all  indefeasible  and  indestructible 
parts  of  one  great  Unity  in  which  “  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being.”  That  being  so,  it  is  clear  that  there  remains 
in  the  end  a  self-consciousness  which  need  by  no  means 
be  abandoned,  which  indeed  only  comes  to  its  true  fruition 
md  understanding  when  it  recognises  its  affiliation  with 
the  Whole,  and  glories  in  an  individuality  which  is  an 

18 


274  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


expression  both  of  itself  and  of  the  whole.  The  human 
child  at  its  mother’s  knee  probably  comes  first  to  know  it 
has  a  ‘  self  ’  on  some  fateful  day  when  having  wandered 
afar  it  goes  lost  among  alien  houses  and  streets  or  in  the 
trackless  fields.  That  appalling  experience — the  sense  of 
danger,  of  fear,  of  loneliness — is  never  forgotten  ;  it  stamps 
some  new  sense  of  Being  upon  the  childish  mind,  but  that 
sense,  instead  of  being  destroyed,  becomes  all  the  prouder 
and  more  radiant  in  the  hour  of  return  to  the  mother’s 
arms.  The  return,  the  salvation,  for  which  humanity 
looks,  is  the  return  of  the  little  individual  self  to  harmony 
and  union  with  the  great  Self  of  the  universe,  but  by  no 
means  its  extinction  or  abandonment — rather  the  finding 
of  its  own  true  nature  as  never  before. 

There  is  another  thing  which  may  be  said  here  :  namely, 
that  the  disentanglement,  as  above,  of  three  main  stages 
of  psychological  evolution  as  great  formative  influences 
in  the  history  of  mankind,  does  not  by  any  means  preclude 
the  establishment  of  lesser  stages  within  the  boundaries 
of  these.  In  all  probability  subdivisions  of  all  the  three  will 
come  in  time  to  be  recognised  and  allowed  for.  To  take 
the  Second  stage  only,  it  may  appear  that  Self-consciousness 
in  its  first  development  is  characterised  by  an  accentuation 
of  Timidity  ;  in  its  second  development  by  a  more  deliberate 
pursuit  of  sensual  Pleasure  (lust,  food,  drink,  &c.)  ;  in  its 
third  by  the  pursuit  of  mental  gratifications  (vanities, 
ambitions,  enslavement  of  others)  ;  in  its  fourth  by  the 
pursuit  of  Property,  as  a  means  of  attaining  these  objects  ; 
in  its  fifth  by  the  access  of  enmities,  jealousies,  wars  and  so 
forth,  consequent  on  all  these  things  ;  and  so  on.  I  have  no 
intention  at  present  of  following  out  this  line  of  thought,  but 
only  wish  to  suggest  its  feasibility  and  the  degree  to  which 
it  may  throw  light  on  the  social  evolutions  of  the  Past.1 

1  For  an  analysis  of  the  nature  of  Self-consciousness  see  vol.  iii, 
p.  375  sq.  of  the  three  ponderous  tomes  by  Wilhelm  Wundt — Grund- 


CONCLUSION 


275 


As  a  kind  of  rude  general  philosophy  we  may  say  that 
there  are  only  two  main  factors  in  life,  namely,  Love  and 
Ignorance.  And  of  these  we  may  also  say  that  the  two  are 
not  in  the  same  plane  :  one  is  positive  and  substantial, 
the  other  is  negative  and  merely  illusory.  It  may  be  thought 
at  first  that  Fear  and  Hatred  and  Cruelty,  and  the  like, 
are  very  positive  things,  but  in  the  end  we  see  that  they 
are  due  merely  to  absence  of  perception,  to  dulness  of 
understanding.  Or  we  may  put  the  statement  in  a  rather 
less  crude  form,  and  say  that  there  are  only  two  factors 
in  life  :  (i)  the  sense  of  Unity  with  others  (and  with  Nature) 
— which  covers  Love,  Faith,  Courage,  Truth,  and  so  forth, 
and  (2)  Non-perception  of  the  same — which  covers  Enmity, 
Fear,  Hatred,  Self-pity,  Cruelty,  Jealousy,  Meanness  and 
an  endless  similar  list.  The  present  world  which  we  see 
around  us,  with  its  idiotic  wars,  its  senseless  jealousies  of 
nations  and  classes,  its  fears  and  greeds  and  vanities  and 
its  futile  endeavours — as  of  people  struggling  in  a  swamp 
— to  find  one’s  own  salvation  by  treading  others  underfoot, 
is  a  negative  phenomenon.  Ignorance,  non- perception,  are 
at  the  root  of  it.  But  it  is  the  blessed  virtue  of  Ignorance 
and  of  non-perception  that  they  inevitably — if  only  slowly 
and  painfully — destroy  themselves.  All  experience  serves 
to  dissipate  them.  The  world,  as  it  is,  carries  the  doom 
of  its  own  transformation  in  its  bosom  ;  and  in  proportion 
as  that  which  is  negative  disappears  the  positive  element 
must  establish  itself  more  and  more. 

So  we  come  back  to  that  with  which  we  began,1  to  Fear 
bred  by  Ignorance.  From  that  source  has  sprung  the  long 
catalogue  of  follies,  cruelties  and  sufferings  which  mark 
the  records  of  the  human  race  since  the  dawn  of  history  ; 
and  to  the  overcoming  of  this  Fear  we  perforce  must  look 

ziigc  dev  Physiologischen  Psychologic — in  which  amid  an  enormous 
mass  of  verbiage  occasional  gleams  of  useful  suggestion  are  to  be 
found. 

1  See  Introduction,  Ch.  I,  supra. 


276  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


for  our  future  deliverance,  and  for  the  discovery,  even  in 
the  midst  of  this  world,  of  our  true  Home.  The  time  is 
coming  when  the  positive  constructive  element  must  domi¬ 
nate.  It  is  inevitable  that  Man  must  ever  build  a  state  of 
society  around  him  after  the  pattern  and  image  of  his  own 
interior  state.  The  whole  futile  and  idiotic  structure  of 
commerce  and  industry  in  which  we  are  now  imprisoned 
springs  from  that  falsehood  of  individualistic  self-seeking 
which  marks  the  second  stage  of  human  evolution.  That 
stage  is  already  tottering  to  its  fall,  destroyed  by  the  very 
flood  of  egotistic  passions  and  interests,  of  vanities,  greeds, 
and  cruelties,  all  warring  with  each  other,  which  are  the 
sure  outcome  and  culmination  of  its  operation.  With  the 
restoration  of  the  sentiment  of  the  Common  Life,  and  the 
gradual  growth  of  a  mental  attitude  corresponding,  there 
will  emerge  from  the  flood  something  like  a  solid  earth — 
something  on  which  it  will  be  possible  to  build  with  good 
hope  for  the  future.  Schemes  of  reconstruction  are  well 
enough  in  their  way,  but  if  there  is  no  ground  of  real  human 
solidarity  beneath,  of  what  avail  are  they  ? 

An  industrial  system  which  is  no  real  industrial  order, 
but  only  (on  the  part  of  the  employers)  a  devil’s  device 
for  securing  private  profit  under  the  guise  of  public  utility, 
and  (on  the  part  of  the  employed)  a  dismal  and  poor-spirited 
renunciation — for  the  sake  of  a  bare  living — of  all  real 
interest  in  life  and  work  :  such  a  ‘  system  ’  must  infallibly 
pass  away.  It  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things  be  permanent. 
The  first  condition  of  social  happiness  and  prosperity  must 
be  the  sense  of  the  Common  Life.  This  sense,  which  in¬ 
stinctively  underlay  the  whole  Tribal  order  of  the  far  past — 
which  first  came  to  consciousness  in  the  worship  of  a  thousand 
pagan  divinities,  and  in  the  rituals  of  countless  sacrifices, 
initiations,  redemptions,  love-feasts  and  communions,  which 
inspired  the  dreams  of  the  Golden  Age,  and  flashed  out 
for  a  time  in  the  Communism  of  the  early  Christians  and  in 
their  adorations  of  the  risen  Saviour — must  in  the  end  be 


CONCLUSION 


277 


the  creative  condition  of  a  new  order :  it  must  provide 
the  material  of  which  the  Golden  City  waits  to  be  built. 
The  long  travail  of  the  World-religion  will  not  have  been 
in  vain,  which  assures  this  consummation.  What  the  signs 
and  conditions  of  any  general  advance  into  this  new  order 
of  life  and  consciousness  will  be,  we  know  not.  It  may 
be  that  as  to  individuals  the  revelation  of  a  new  vision 
i  often  comes  quite  suddenly,  and  generally  perhaps  after 
a  period  of  great  suffering,  so  to  society  at  large  a  similar 
revelation  will  arrive — like  “  the  lightning  which  cometh 
jt  out  of  the  East  and  shineth  even  unto  the  West  ” — with 
unexpected  swiftness.  On  the  other  hand  it  would  perhaps 
be  wise  not  to  count  too  much  on  any  such  sudden  trans¬ 
formation.  When  we  look  abroad  (and  at  home)  in  this 
year  of  grace  and  hoped-for  peace,  1919,  and  see  the  spirits 
of  rancour  and  revenge,  the  fears,  the  selfish  blindness  and 
the  ignorance,  which  still  hold  in  their  paralysing  grasp 
huge  classes  and  coteries  in  every  country  in  the  world, 
we  see  that  the  second  stage  of  human  development  is  by 
no  means  yet  at  its  full  term,  and  that,  as  in  some  vast 
chrysalis,  for  the  liberation  of  the  creature  within  still  more 
and  more  terrible  struggles  may  be  necessary.  We  can 
only  pray  that  such  may  not  be  the  case.  Anyhow,  if 
we  have  followed  the  argument  of  this  book  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  the  destruction  (which  is  going  on  everywhere) 
of  the  outer  form  of  the  present  society  marks  the  first 
stage  of  man’s  final  liberation  ;  and  that,  sooner  or  later, 
and  in  its  own  good  time,  that  further  '  divine  event  ’  will 
surely  be  realised. 

Nor  need  we  fear  that  Humanity,  when  it  has  once 
entered  into  the  great  Deliverance,  will  be  again  over¬ 
powered  by  evil.  From  Knowledge  back  to  Ignorance 
there  is  no  complete  return.  The  nations  that  have  come 
to  enlightenment  need  entertain  no  dread  of  those  others 
(however  hostile  they  appear)  who  are  still  plunging  darkly 


278  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 

in  the  troubled  waters  of  self-greed.  The  dastardly  Fears 
which  inspire  all  brutishness  and  cruelty  of  warfare — - 
whether  of  White  against  White  or  it  may  be  of  White 
against  Yellow  or  Black — may  be  dismissed  for  good  and 
all  by  that  blest  race  which  once  shall  have  gained  the  shore 
— since  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case  those  who  are  on 
dry  land  can  fear  nothing  and  need  fear  nothing  from  the 
unfortunates  who  are  yet  tossing  in  the  welter  and  turmoil 
of  the  waves. 

Dr.  Frazer,  in  the  conclusion  of  his  great  work  The  Golden 
Bough,1  bids  farewell  to  his  readers  with  the  following 
words  :  “  The  laws  of  Nature  are  merely  hypotheses 

devised  to  explain  that  ever-shifting  phantasmagoria  of 
thought  which  we  dignify  with  the  high-sounding  names 
of  the  World  and  the  Universe.  In  the  last  analysis  magic, 
religion  and  science  are  nothing  but  theories  [of  thought]  ; 
and  as  Science  has  supplanted  its  predecessors  so  it  may 
hereafter  itself  be  superseded  by  some  more  perfect  hypo¬ 
thesis,  perhaps  by  some  perfectly  different  way  of  looking 
at  phenomena — of  registering  the  shadows  on  the  screen — - 
of  which  we  in  this  generation  can  form  no  idea.”  I  imagine 
Dr.  Frazer  is  right  in  thinking  that  “  a  way  of  looking 
at  phenomena  ”  different  from  the  way  of  Science,  may 
some  day  prevail.  But  I  think  this  change  will  come,  not 
so  much  by  the  growth  of  Science  itself  or  the  extension 
of  its  f  hypotheses/  as  by  a  growth  and  expansion  of  the 
human  heart  and  a  change  in  its  psychology  and  powers 
of  perception.  Perhaps  some  of  the  preceding  chapters 
will  help  to  show  how  much  the  outlook  of  humanity  on 
the  world  has  been  guided  through  the  centuries  by  the 
slow  evolution  of  its  inner  consciousness.  Gradually,  out 
of  an  infinite  mass  of  folly  and  delusion,  the  human  soul 
has  in  this  way  disentangled  itself,  and  will  in  the  future 
disentangle  itself,  to  emerge  at  length  in  the  fight  of  true 
Freedom.  All  the  taboos,  the  insane  terrors,  the  fatuous 
1  See  "  Balder,"  vol.  ii,  pp.  306,  307.  ("  Farewell  to  Nemi.”) 


CONCLUSION 


279 


forbiddals  of  this  and  that  (with  their  consequent  heart- 
searchings  and  distress)  may  perhaps  have  been  in  their 
way  necessary,  in  order  to  rivet  and  define  the  meaning 
and  the  understanding  of  that  word.  To-day  these  taboos 
and  terrors  still  linger,  many  of  them,  in  the  form  of  con¬ 
ventions  of  morality,  uneasy  strivings  of  conscience,  doubts 
and  desperations  of  religion  ;  but  ultimately  Man  will  emerge 
from  all  these  things,  free— familiar,  that  is,  with  them  all, 
making  use  of  all,  allowing  generously  for  the  values  of 
all,  but  hampered  and  bound  by  none.  He  will  realise 
the  inner  meaning  of  the  creeds  and  rituals  of  the  ancient 
religions,  and  will  hail  with  joy  the  fulfilment  of  their  far 
prophecy  down  the  ages — finding  after  all  the  long-expected 
Saviour  of  the  world  within  his  own  breast,  and  Paradise 
in  the  disclosure  there  of  the  everlasting  peace  of  the  soul. 


APPENDIX 


THE  TEACHING  OF  THE  UPANISHADS 


Being  the  Substance  of  Two  Lectures  to  Popular  Audiences 
I.  REST 


II. 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


I 


REST 

To  some,  in  the  present  whirlpool  of  life  and  affairs  it  may 
seem  almost  an  absurdity  to  talk  about  Rest.  For  long  enough 
now  rest  has  seemed  a  thing  far  off  and  unattainable.  With 
the  posts  knocking  at  our  doors  ten  or  twelve  times  a  day,  with 
telegrams  arriving  every  hour,  and  the  telephone  bell  constantly 
ringing  ;  with  motors  rushing  wildly  about  the  streets,  and 
aeroplanes  whizzing  overhead,  with  work  speeded  up  in  every 
direction,  and  the  drive  in  the  workshops  becoming  more  in¬ 
tolerable  every  day  ;  with  the  pace  of  the  walkers  and  the 
pace  of  the  talkers  from  hour  to  hour  insanely  increasing — 
what  room,  it  may  well  be  asked,  is  there  for  Rest  ?  And  now 
the  issues  of  war,  redoubling  the  urgency  of  all  questions,  are 
on  us. 

The  problem  is  obviously  a  serious  one.  So  urgent  is  it  that 
I  think  one  may  safely  say  the  amount  of  insanity  due  to  the 
pressure  of  daily  life  is  increasing  ;  nursing-homes  have  sprung 
up  for  the  special  purpose  of  treating  such  cases  ;  and  doctors 
are  starting  special  courses  of  tuition  in  the  art — now  becoming 
very  important — of  systematically  doing  nothing  !  And  yet 
it  is  difficult  to  see  the  outcome  of  it  all.  The  clock  of  what 
is  called  Progress  is  not  easily  turned  backward.  We  should 
not  very  readily  agree  nowadays  to  the  abolition  of  telegrams 
or  to  a  regulation  compelling  express  trains  to  stop  at  every 
station  !  We  can’t  all  go  to  Nursing  Homes,  or  afford  to  enjoy 
a  winter’s  rest-cure  in  Egypt.  And,  if  not,  is  the  speeding-up 
process  to  go  on  indefinitely,  incapable  of  being  checked,  and 
destined  ultimately  to  land  civilisation  in  the  mad-house  ? 

It  is,  I  say,  a  serious  and  an  urgent  problem.  And  it  is,  I 
think,  forcing  a  certain  answer  on  us — which  I  will  now  en¬ 
deavour  to  explain. 


283 


.  284  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


If  we  cannot  turn  back  and  reverse  this  fatal  onrush  of  modern 
life  (and  it  is  evident  that  we  cannot  do  so  in  any  very  brief 
time — though  of  course  ultimately  we  might  succeed)  then  I 
think  there  are  clearly  only  two  alternatives  left — either  to  go 
forward  to  general  dislocation  and  madness,  or — to  learn  to 
rest  even  in  the  very  midst  of  the  hurry  and  the  scurry. 

To  explain  what  I  mean,  let  me  use  an  illustration.  The 
typhoons  and  cyclones  of  the  China  Seas  are  some  of  the  most 
formidable  storms  that  ships  can  encounter.  Their  paths  in 
the  past  have  been  strewn  with  wrecks  and  disaster.  But 
now  with  increased  knowledge  much  of  their  danger  has  been 
averted.  It  is  known  that  they  are  circular  in  character,  and 
that  though  the  wind  on  their  outskirts  often  reaches  a  speed  of 
ioo  miles  an  hour,  in  the  centre  of  the  storm  there  is  a  space  of 
complete  calm — not  a  calm  of  the  sea  certainly,  but  a  complete 
absence  of  wind.  The  skilled  navigator,  if  he  cannot  escape 
the  storm,  steers  right  into  the  heart  of  it,  and  rests  there. 
Even  in  the  midst  of  the  clatter  he  finds  a  place  of  quiet  where 
he  can  trim  his  sails  and  adjust  his  future  course.  He  knows 
too  from  his  position  in  what  direction  at  every  point  around 
him  the  wind  is  moving  and  where  it  will  strike  him  when  at 
last  his  ship  emerges  from  the  charmed  circle. 

Is  it  not  possible,  we  may  ask,  that  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
cyclone  of  daily  life  we  may  find  a  similar  resting-place  ?  If 
we  can,  our  case  is  by  no  means  hopeless.  If  we  cannot,  then 
indeed  there  is  danger. 

Looking  back  in  History  we  seem  to  see  that  in  old  times 
people  took  life  much  more  leisurely  than  they  do  now.  The 
elder  generations  gave  more  scope  in  their  customs  and  their 
religions  for  contentment  and  peace  of  mind.  We  associate 
a  certain  quietism  and  passivity  with  the  thought  of  the 
Eastern  peoples.  But  as  civilisation  traveled  Westward  external 
activity  and  the  pace  of  life  increased — less  and  less  time  was 
left  for  meditation  and  repose — till  with  the  rise  of  Western 
Europe  and  America,  the  dominant  note  of  life  seems  to  have 
simply  become  one  of  feverish  and  ceaseless  activity — of  activity 
merely  for  the  sake  of  activity,  without  any  clear  idea  of  its 
own  purpose  or  object. 

Such  a  prospect  does  not  at  first  seem  very  hopeful  ;  but 
on  second  thoughts  we  see  that  we  are  not  forced  to  draw  any 
very  pessimistic  conclusion  from  it.  The  direction  of  human 
evolution  need  not  remain  always  the  same.  The  movement, 
in  fact,  of  civilisation  from  East  to  West  has  now  clearly  com- 


REST 


285 


pleted  itself.  The  globe  has  been  circled,  and  we  cannot  go 
any  farther  to  the  West  without  coming  round  to  the  East  again. 
It  is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  our  psychology,  our  philosophy 
and  our  religious  sense  are  already  taking  on  an  Eastern  colour  ; 
nor  is  it  difficult  to  imagine  that  with  the  end  of  the  present 
dispensation  a  new  era  may  perfectly  naturally  arrive  in  which 
the  St.  Vitus'  dance  of  money-making  and  ambition  will  cease 
to  be  the  chief  end  of  existence. 

In  the  history  of  nations  as  in  the  history  of  individuals  there 
are  periods  when  the  formative  ideals  of  life  (through  some 
hidden  influence)  change  ;  and  the  mode  of  life  and  evolution 
in  consequence  changes  also.  I  remember  when  I  was  a  boy 
wishing — like  many  other  boys — to  go  to  sea.  I  wanted  to 
join  the  Navy.  It  was  not,  I  am  sure,  that  I  was  so  very  anxious 
to  defend  my  country.  No,  there  was  a  much  simpler  and  more 
prosaic  motive  than  that.  The  ships  of  those  days  with  their 
complex  rigging  suggested  a  perfect  paradise  of  climbing,  and 
I  know  that  it  was  the  thought  of  that  which  influenced  me. 
To  be  able  to  climb  indefinitely  among  those  ropes  and  spars  ! 
How  delightful  !  Of  course  I  knew  perfectly  well  that  I  should 
not  always  have  free  access  to  the  rigging  ;  but  then — some 
day,  no  doubt,  I  should  be  an  Admiral,  and  who  then  could 
prevent  me  ?  I  remember  seeing  myself  in  my  mind’s  eye, 
with  cocked  hat  on  my  head  and  spy-glass  under  my  arm, 
roaming  at  my  own  sweet  will  up  aloft,  regardless  of  the  remon¬ 
strances  which  might  reach  me  from  below  !  Such  was  my 
childish  ideal.  But  a  time  came — needless  to  say — when  I 
conceived  a  different  idea  of  the  object  of  life. 

It  is  said  that  John  Tyndall,  whose  lectures  on  Science  were 
so  much  sought  after  in  their  time,  being  on  one  occasion  in 
New  York  was  accosted  after  his  discourse  by  a  very  successful 
American  business  man,  who  urged  him  to  devote  his  scientific 
knowledge  and  ability  to  commercial  pursuits,  promising  that 
if  he  did  so,  he,  Tyndall,  would  easily  make  “  a  big  pile.” 
Tyndall  very  calmly  replied,  “  Well,  I  myself  thought  of  that 
once,  but  I  soon  abandoned  the  idea,  having  come  to  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  I  had  no  time  to  waste  in  making  money.”  The 
man  of  dollars  nearly  sank  into  the  ground.  Such  a  conception 
of  life  had  never  entered  his  head  before.  But  to  Tyndall  no 
doubt  it  was  obvious  that  if  he  chained  himself  to  the  commercial 
ideal  all  the  joy  and  glory  of  his  days  would  be  gone. 

We  sometimes  hear  of  the  awful  doom  of  some  of  the  Russian 
convicts  in  the  quarries  and  mines  of  Siberia,  who  are  (or  were) 


286  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


chained  permanently  to  their  wheelbarrows.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  a  more  dreadful  fate  :  the  despair,  the  disgust,  the 
deadly  loathing  of  the  accursed  thing  from  which  there  is  no 
escape  day  or  night — which  is  the  companion  not  only  of  the 
prisoner’s  work  but  of  his  hours  of  rest — with  which  he  has  to 
sleep,  to  feed,  to  take  his  recreation  if  he  has  any,  and  to  fulfil 
all  the  offices  of  nature.  Could  anything  be  more  crushing  ? 
And  yet,  and  yet  ...  is  it  not  true  that  we,  most  of  us,  in 
our  various  ways  are  chained  to  our  wheelbarrows — is  it  not 
too  often  true  that  to  these  beggarly  things  we  have  for  the 
most  part  chained  ourselves  ? 

Let  me  be  understood.  Of  course  we  all  have  (or  ought  to 
have)  our  work  to  do.  We  have  our  living  to  get,  our  families 
to  support,  our  trade,  our  art,  our  profession  to  pursue.  In 
that  sense  no  doubt  we  are  tied  ;  but  I  take  it  that  these  things 
are  like  the  wheelbarrow  which  a  man  uses  while  he  is  at  work. 
It  may  irk  him  at  times,  but  he  sticks  to  it  with  a  good  heart, 
and  with  a  certain  joy  because  it  is  the  instrument  of  a  noble 
purpose.  That  is  all  right.  But  to  be  chained  to  it,  not  to 
be  able  to  leave  it  when  the  work  of  the  day  is  done — that  is 
indeed  an  ignoble  slavery.  I  would  say,  then,  take  care  that 
even  with  these  things,  these  necessary  arts  of  life,  you  preserve 
your  independence,  that  even  if  to  some  degree  they  may  confine 
your  body  they  do  not  enslave  your  mind. 

For  it  is  the  freedom  of  the  mind  which  counts.  We  are 
all  no  doubt  caught  in  the  toils  of  the  earth-life.  One  man  is 
largely  dominated  by  sensual  indulgence,  another  by  ambition, 
another  by  the  pursuit  of  money.  Well,  these  things  are  all 
right  in  themselves.  Without  the  pleasures  of  the  senses  we 
should  be  dull  mokes  indeed  ;  without  ambition  much  of  the 
zest  and  enterprise  of  life  would  be  gone  ;  gold,  in  the  present 
order  of  affairs,  is  a  very  useful  servant.  These  things  are 
right  enough — but  to  be  chained  to  them,  to  be  unable  to  think 
of  anything  else — what  a  fate  !  The  subject  reminds  one  of 
a  not  uncommon  spectacle.  It  is  a  glorious  day  ;  the  sun  is 
bright,  small  white  clouds  float  in  the  transparent  blue — a  day 
when  you  linger  perforce  on  the  road  to  enjoy  the  scene.  But 
suddenly  here  comes  a  man  painfully  running  all  hot  and  dusty 
and  mopping  his  head,  and  with  no  eye,  clearly,  for  anything 
around  him.  What  is  the  matter  ?  He  is  absorbed  by  one  idea. 
He  is  running  to  catch  a  train  !  And  one  cannot  help  wondering 
what  exceedingly  important  business  it  must  be  for  which  all  this 
glory  and  beauty  is  sacrificed,  and  passed  by  as  if  it  did  not  exist. 


REST 


287 


Further  we  must  remember  that  in  our  foolishness  we  very 
commonly  chain  ourselves,  not  only  to  things  like  sense- 
pleasures  and  ambitions  which  are  on  the  edge,  so  to  speak, 
of  being  vices  ;  but  also  to  other  things  which  are  accounted 
virtues,  and  which  as  far  as  I  can  see  are  just  as  bad,  if  we  once 
become  enslaved  to  them.  I  have  known  people  who  were  so 
exceedingly  ‘  spiritual  ’  and  ‘  good  7  that  one  really  felt  quite 
depressed  in  their  company  ;  I  have  known  others  whose  sense 
of  duty,  dear  things,  was  so  strong  that  they  seemed  quite 
unable  to  rest,  or  even  to  allow  their  friends  to  rest  ;  and  I 
have  wondered  whether,  after  all,  worriting  about  one’s  duty 
might  not  be  as  bad — as  deteriorating  to  oneself,  as  distressing 
to  one’s  friends — as  sinning  a  good  solid  sin.  No,  in  this  respect 
virtues  may  be  no  better  than  vices  ;  and  to  be  chained  to  a 
wheelbarrow  made  of  alabaster  is  no  way  preferable  to  being 
chained  to  one  of  wood.  To  sacrifice  the  immortal'  freedom 
of  the  mind  in  order  to  become  a  prey  to  self-regarding  cares 
and  anxieties,  self-estimating  virtues  and  vices,  self-chaining 
duties  and  indulgences,  is  a  mistake.  And  I  warn  you,  it  is 
quite  useless.  For  the  destiny  of  Freedom  is  ultimately  upon 
every  one,  and  if  refusing  it  for  a  time  you  heap  your  life  per¬ 
sistently  upon  one  object — however  blameless  in  itself  that 
object  may  be— Beware  !  For  one  day — and  when  you  least 
expect  it — the  gods  will  send  a  thunderbolt  upon  you.  One 
day  the  thing  for  which  you  have  toiled  and  spent  laborious 
days  and  sleepless  nights  will  lie  broken  before  you — your  repu¬ 
tation  will  be  ruined,  your  ambition  will  be  dashed,  your  savings 
of  years  will  be  lost — and  for  the  moment  you  will  be  inclined 
to  think  that  your  life  has  been  in  vain.  But  presently  you 
will  wake  up  and  find  that  something  quite  different  has 
happened.  You  will  find  that  the  thunderbolt  which  you 
thought  was  your  ruin  has  been  your  salvation — that  it  has 
broken  the  chain  which  bound  you  to  your  wheelbarrow,  and 
that  you  are  free  ! 


I  think  you  will  now  see  what  I  mean  by  Rest.  Rest  is 
the  loosing  of  the  chains  which  bind  us  to  the  whirligig  of  the 
world  ;  it  is  the  passing  into  the  centre  of  the  Cyclone  ;  it  is 
the  Stilling  of  Thought.  For  (with  regard  to  this  last)  it  is 
Thought,  it  is  the  Attachment  of  the  Mind,  which  binds  us 
to  outer  things.  The  outer  things  themselves  are  all  right. 
It  is  only  through  our  thoughts  that  they  make  slaves  of  us. 


288  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Obtain  power  over  your  thoughts  and  you  are  free.  You  can 
then  use  the  outer  things  or  dismiss  them  at  your  pleasure. 

There  is  nothing  new  of  course  in  all  this.  It  has  been  known 
for  ages  ;  and  is  part  of  the  ancient  philosophy  of  the  world. 

In  the  Katha  Upanishad  you  will  find  these  words  (Max 
Muller’s  translation)  :  “As  rainwater  that  has  fallen  on  a 
mountain  ridge  runs  down  on  all  sides,  thus  does  he  who  sees 
a  difference  between  qualities  run  after  them  on  all  sides.” 
This  is  the  figure  of  the  man  who  does  not  rest.  And  it  is  a 
powerful  likeness.  The  thunder  shower  descends  on  the  moun¬ 
tain  top  ;  torrents  of  water  pour  down  the  crags  in  every 
direction.  Imagine  the  state  of  mind  of  a  man — however 
thirsty  he  may  be — who  endeavors  to  pursue  and  intercept 
all  these  streams  ! 

But  then  the  Upanishad  goes  on  :  “As  pure  water  poured 
into  pure  water  remains  the  same,  thus,  O  Gautama,  is  the  Self 
of  a  thinker  who  knows.”  What  a  perfect  image  of  rest  ! 
Imagine  a  cistern  before  you  with  transparent  glass  sides  and 
filled  with  pure  water.  And  then  imagine  some  one  comes 
with  a  phial,  also  of  pure  water,  and  pours  the  contents  gently 
into  the  cistern.  What  will  happen  ?  Almost  nothing.  The 
pure  water  will  glide  into  the  pure  water — “  remaining  the 
same.”  There  will  be  no  dislocation,  no  discoloration  (as 
might  happen  if  muddy  water  were  poured  in)  ;  there  will  be 
only  perfect  harmony. 

I  imagine  here  that  the  meaning  is  something  like  this.  The 
cistern  is  the  great  Reservoir  of  the  Universe  which  contains 
the  pure  and  perfect  Spirit  of  all  life.  Each  one  of  us,  and 
every  mortal  creature,  represents  a  drop  from  that  reservoir— 
a  drop  indeed  which  is  also  pure  and  perfect  (though  the  phial 
in  which  it  is  contained  may  not  always  be  so).  When  we, 
each  of  us,  descend  into  the  world  and  meet  the  great  Ocean 
of  Life  which  dwells  there  behind  all  mortal  forms,  it  is  like 
the  little  phial  being  poured  into  the  great  reservoir.  If  the 
tiny  canful  which  is  our  selves  is  pure  and  unsoiled,  then  when 
it  meets  the  world  it  will  blend  with  the  Spirit  which  informs 
the  world  perfectly  harmoniously,  without  distress  or  dislo¬ 
cation.  It  will  pass  through  and  be  at  one  with  it.  How  can 
one  describe  such  a  state  of  affairs  ?  You  will  have  the  key 
to  every  person  that  you  meet,  because  indeed  you  are  con¬ 
scious  that  the  real  essence  of  that  person  is  the  same  as  your 
own.  Y ou  will  have  the  solution  of  every  event  which  happens. 
For  every  event  is  (and  is  felt  to  be)  the  touch  of  the  great 


REST 


289 


Spirit  on  yours.  Can  any  description  of  Rest  be  more  perfect 
than  that  ?  Pure  water  poured  into  pure  water.  .  .  .  There 
is  no  need  to  hurry,  for  everything  will  come  in  its  good 
time.  There  is  no  need  to  leave  your  place,  for  all  you  desire 
is  close  at  hand. 

Here  is  another  verse  (from  the  Vagasaneyi-Samhita  Upan- 
ishad)  embodying  the  same  idea  :  “  And  he  who  beholds  all 
beings  in  the  Self,  and  the  Self  in  all  beings,  he  never  turns 
away  from  It.  When,  to  a  man  who  understands,  the  Self 
has  become  all  things,  what  sorrow,  what  trouble,  can  there 
be  to  him — having  once  beheld  that  Unity  ?  ” — What  trouble, 
what  sorrow,  indeed,  when  the  universe  has  become  trans¬ 
parent  with  the  presences  of  all  we  love,  held  firm  in  the  One 
i  enfolding  Presence  ? 

But  it  will  be  said  :  “  Our  minds  are  not  pure  and  trans¬ 
parent.  More  often  they  are  muddy  and  soiled — soiled,  if  not 
in  their  real  essence,  yet  by  reason  of  the  mortal  phial  in  which 
they  are  contained.”  And  that  alas  !  is  true.  If  you  pour 
a  phial  of  muddy  water  into  that  reservoir  which  we  described 
— what  will  you  see  ?  You  will  see  a  queer  and  ugly  cloud 
formed.  And  to  how  many  of  us,  in  our  dealings  with  the 
world,  does  life  take  on  just  such  a  form — of  a  queer  and  ugly 
cloud  ? 

Now  not  so  very  long  after  those  Upanishads  were  written 
there  lived  in  China  that  great  Teacher,  Lao-tze  ;  and  he  too 
had  considered  these  things.  And  he  wrote — in  the  Tao-Teh- 
King — “  Who  is  there  who  can  make  muddy  water  clear  ?  ” 
The  question  sounds  like  a  conundrum.  For  a  moment  one 
hesitates  to  answer  it.  Lao-tze,  however,  has  an  answer  ready. 
He  says  :  “  But  if  you  leave  it  alone  it  will  become  clear  of  itself.” 
That  muddy  water  of  the  mind,  muddied  by  all  the  foolish 
little  thoughts  which  like  a  sediment  infest  it — but  if  you  leave 
it  alone  it  will  become  clear  of  itself.  Sometimes  walking  along 
the  common  road  after  a  shower  you  have  seen  pools  of  water 
lying  here  and  there,  dirty  and  unsightly  with  the  mud  stirred 
up  by  the  hooves  of  men  and  animals.  And  then  returning 
some  hours  afterwards  along  the  same  road — in  the  evening 
and  after  the  cessation  of  traffic — you  have  looked  again,  and 
lo  !  each  pool  has  cleared  itself  to  a  perfect  calm,  and  has  become 
a  lovely  mirror  reflecting  the  trees  and  the  clouds  and  the  sunset 
and  the  stars.  | 

So  this  mirror  of  the  mind.  Leave  it  alone.  Let  the  ugly  f 
sediment  of  tiresome  thoughts  and  anxieties,  and  of  fussing 

19 


290  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


over  one’s  self-importances  and  duties,  settle  down — and  pre¬ 
sently  you  will  look  on  it,  and  see  something  there  which  you 
never  knew  or  imagined  before — something  more  beautiful 
than  you  ever  yet  beheld — a  reflection  of  the  real  and  eternal 
world  such  is  only  given  to  the  mind  that  rests. 

Do  not  recklessly  spill  the  waters  of  your  mind  in  this  direction 
and  in  that,  lest  you  become  like  a  spring  lost  and  dissipated  in  the 
desert. 

But  draw  them  together  into  a  little  compass,  and  hold  them  still, 
so  still ; 

And  let  them  become  clear,  so  clear — so  limpid,  so  mirror-like  ; 

At  last  the  mountains  and  the  sky  shall  glass  themselves  in  peace¬ 
ful  beauty. 

And  the  antelope  shall  descend  to  drink,  and  the  lion  to  quench 
his  thirst, 

And  Love  himself  shall  come  and  bend  over,  and  catch  his  own 
likeness  in  you.1 

Yes,  there  is  this  priceless  thing  within  us,  but  hoofing  along 
the  roads  in  the  mud  we  fail  to  find  it  ;  there  is  this  region  of 
calm,  but  the  cyclone  of  the  world  raging  around  guards  us 
from  entering  it.  Perhaps  it  is  best  so — best  that  the  access 
to  it  should  not  be  made  too  easy.  One  day,  some  time  ago, 
in  the  course  of  conversation  with  Rabindranath  Tagore  in 
London,  I  asked  him  what  impressed  him  most  in  visiting  the 
great  city.  He  said,  “  The  restless  incessant  movement  of 
everybody.”  I  said,  “  Yes,  they  seem  as  if  they  were  all  rush¬ 
ing  about  looking  for  something.”  He  replied,  “  It  is  because 
each  person  does  not  know  of  the  great  treasure  he  has  within 
himself.” 


How  then  are  we  to  reach  this  treasure  and  make  it  our  own  ? 
How  are  we  to  attain  to  this  Stilling  of  the  Mind,  which  is  the 
secret  of  all  power  and  possession  ?  The  thing  is  difficult,  no 
doubt  ;  yet  as  I  tried  to  show  at  the  outset  of  this  discourse, 
we  Moderns  must  reach  it ;  we  have  got  to  attain  to  it — for 
the  penalty  of  failure  is  and  must  be  widespread  Madness. 

The  power  to  still  the  mind — to  be  able,  mark  you,  when 
you  want,  to  enter  into  the  region  of  Rest,  and  to  dismiss  or 
command  your  Thoughts — is  a  condition  of  Health  ;  it  is  a 
condition  of  all  Power  and  Energy.  For  all  health,  whether 


1  Towards  Democracy,  p.  373. 


REST 


291 


of  mind  or  body,  resides  in  one’s  relation  to  the  central  Life 
within.  If  one  cannot  get  into  touch  with  that,  then  the  life- 
forces  cannot  flow  down  into  the  organism.  Most,  perhaps  all, 
disease  arises  from  the  disturbance  of  this  connexion.  All  mere 
hurry,  all  mere  running  after  external  things  (as  of  the  man 
after  the  water-streams  on  the  mountain-top),  inevitably  breaks 
it.  Let  a  pond  be  allowed  calmly  under  the  influence  of  frost 
to  crystallise,  and  most  beautiful  flowers  and  spears  of  ice  will 
be  formed  ;  but  keep  stirring  the  water  all  the  time  with  a 
stick  or  a  pole  and  nothing  will  result  but  an  ugly  brash  of  half- 
frozen  stuff.  The  condition  of  the  exercise  of  power  and  energy 
is  that  it  should  proceed  from  a  centre  of  Rest  within  one.  So 
convinced  am  I  of  this,  that  whenever  I  find  myself  hurrying 
over  my  work,  I  pause  and  say,  “  Now  you  are  not  producing 
anything  good  !  ”  and  I  generally  find  that  that  is  true.  It 
is  curious,  but  I  think  very  noticeable,  that  the  places  where 
people  hurry  most — as  for  instance  the  City  of  London  or  Wall 
Street,  New  York — are  just  the  places  where  the  work  being 
done  is  of  least  importance  (being  mostly  money-gambling)  ; 
whereas  if  you  go  and  look  at  a  ploughman  ploughing — doing 
perhaps  the  most  important  of  human  work — you  find  all  his 
movements  most  deliberate  and  leisurely,  as  if  indeed  he  had 
infinite  time  at  command  ;  the  truth  being  that  in  dealing 
(like  a  ploughman)  with  the  earth  and  the  horses  and  the  weather 
and  the  things  of  Nature  generally  you  can  no  more  hurry  than 
Nature  herself  hurries. 

Following  this  line  of  thought  it  might  seem  that  one  would 
arrive  at  a  hopeless  paradox.  If  it  be  true  that  the  less  one 
hurries  the  better  the  work  resulting,  then  it  might  seem  that 
by  sitting  still  and  merely  twirling  one’s  thumbs  one  would 
arrive  at  the  very  greatest  activity  and  efficiency  !  And  indeed 
(if  understood  aright)  there  is  a  truth  even  in  this,  which — like 
the  other  points  I  have  mentioned — has  been,  known  and  taught 
long  ages  ago.  Says  that  humorous  old  sage,  Lao-tze,  whom 
I  have  already  quoted  :  “  By  non-action  there  is  nothing  that 
cannot  be  done.”  At  first  this  sounds  like  mere  foolery  or 
worse  ;  but  afterwards  thinking  on  it  one  sees  there  is  a  meaning 
hidden,  there  is  a  secret  by  which  Nature  and  the  powers 
of  the  universal  life  will  do  all  for  you.  The  Bh&gavat  Gita 
also  says,  “  He  who  discovers  inaction  in  action  and  action  in 
inaction  is  wise  among  mortals.” 

It  is  worth  while  dwelling  for  a  moment  on  these  texts.  We 
are  all — as  I  said  earlier  on — involved  in  work  belonging  to 


292  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


our  place  and  station  ;  we  are  tied  to  some  degree  in  the  bonds 
of  action.  But  that  fact  need  not  imprison  our  inner  minds. 
While  acting  even  with  keenness  and  energy  along  the  external 
and  necessary  path  before  us,  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  hold  the 
mind  free  and  untied — so  that  the  result  of  our  action  (which 
of  course  is  not  ours  to  command)  shall  remain  indifferent  and 
incapable  of  unduly  affecting  us.  Similarly,  when  it  is  our  part 
to  remain  externally  inactive,  we  may  discover  that  underneath 
this  apparent  inaction  we  may  be  taking  part  in  the  currents 
of  a  deeper  life  which  are  moving  on  to  a  definite  end,  to  an 
end  or  object  which  in  a  sense  is  ours  and  in  a  sense  is  not  ours. 
The  lighthouse  beam  flies  over  land  and  sea  with  incredible 
velocity,  and  you  think  the  light  itself  must  be  in  swiftest  move¬ 
ment  ;  but  when  you  climb  up  thither  you  find  the  lamp  abso¬ 
lutely  stationary.  It  is  only  the  reflection  that  is  moving. 
The  rider  on  horseback  may  gallop  to  and  fro  wherever  he  will, 
but  it  is  hard  to  say  that  he  is  acting.  The  horse  guided  by 
the  slightest  indication  of  the  man’s  will  performs  all  the  action 
that  is  needed.  If  we  can  get  into  right  touch  with  the  immense, 
the  incalculable  powers  of  Nature,  is  there  anything  which 
we  may  not  be  able  to  do  ?  “  If  a  man  worship  the  Self  only 

as  his  true  state,”  says  the  Brihad-aranyaka  Upanishad,  “  his 
work  cannot  fail,  for  whatever  he  desires,  that  he  obtains  from 
the  Self.”  What  a  wonderful  saying,  and  how  infallibly  true  ! 
For  obviously  if  you  succeed  in  identifying  your  true  being 
with  the  great  Self  of  the  universe,  then  whatever  you  desire 
the  great  Self  will  also  desire,  and  therefore  every  power  of 
Nature  will  be  at  your  service  and  will  conspire  to  fulfil  your 
need. 

There  are  marvelous  things  here  “  well  wrapped  up  ”  — 
difficult  to  describe,  yet  not  impossible  to  experience.  And 
they  all  depend  upon  that  power  of  stilling  Thought,  that 
ability  to  pass  unharmed  and  undismayed  through  the  grinning 
legions  of  the  lower  mind  into  the  very  heart  of  Paradise. 

The  question  inevitably  arises,  How  can  this  power  be  ob¬ 
tained  ?  And  there  is  only  one  answer — the  same  answer 
which  has  to  be  given  for  the  attainment  of  any  power  or 
faculty.  There  is  no  royal  road.  The  only  way  is  (however 
imperfectly)  to  do  the  thing  in  question,  to  practise  it.  If  you 
would  learn  to  play  cricket,  the  only  way  is  to  play  cricket ; 
if  you  would  be  able  to  speak  a  language,  the  only  way  is  to 
speak  it.  If  you  would  learn  to  swim,  the  only  way  is  to  practise 
swimming.  Or  would  you  wish  to  be  like  the  man  who  when 


REST 


293 


his  companions  were  bathing  and  bidding  him  come  and  join 
them,  said  :  “Yes,  I  am  longing  to  join  you,  but  I  am  not 
going  to  be  such  a  fool  as  to  go  into  the  water  till  I  know  how  to 
swim  !  ” 

There  is  nothing  but  practice.  If  you  want  to  obtain  that 
priceless  power  of  commanding  Thought— of  using  it  or  dis¬ 
missing  it  (for  the  two  things  go  together)  at  will — there  is  no 
way  but  practice.  And  the  practice  consists  in  two  exercises  : 
(a)  that  of  concentration — in  holding  the  thought  steadily  for 
a  time  on  one  subject,  or  point  of  a  subject ;  and  ( b )  that  of 
effacement — in  effacing  any  given  thought  from  the  mind,  and 
determining  not  to  entertain  it  for  such  and  such  a  time.  Both 
these  exercises  are  difficult.  Failure  in  practising  them  is  certain 
— and  may  even  extend  over  years.  But  the  power  equally 
certainly  grows  with  practice.  And  ultimately  there  may  come 
a  time  when  the  learner  is  not  only  able  to  efface  from  his  mind 
any  given  thought  (however  importunate),  but  may  even 
succeed  in  effacing,  during  short  periods,  all  thought  of  any 
kind.  When  this  stage  is  reached,  the  veil  of  illusion  which 
surrounds  all  mortal  things  is  pierced,  and  the  entrance  to  the 
Paradise  of  Rest  (and  of  universal  power  and  knowledge)  is 
found. 

Of  indirect  or  auxiliary  methods  of  reaching  this  great  con¬ 
clusion,  there  are  more  than  one.  I  think  a  life  in  the  ppen 
air,  if  not  absolutely  necessary,  at  least  most  important.  The 
gods — though  sometimes  out  of  compassion  the}/  visit  the 
interiors  of  houses — are  not  fond  of  such  places  and  the  evil 
effluvium  they  find  there,  and  avoid  them  as  much  as  they  can. 
It  is  not  merely  a  question  of  breathing  oxygen  instead  of 
carbonic  acid.  There  is  a  presence  and  an  influence  in  Nature 
and  the  Open  which  expands  the  mind  and  causes  brigand 
cares  and  worries  to  drop  off — whereas  in  confined  places  foolish 
and  futile  thoughts  of  all  kinds  swarm  like  microbes  and  cloud 
and  conceal  the  soul.  Experto  Credo.  It  is  only  necessary  to 
try  this  experiment  in  order  to  prove  its  truth. 

Another  thing  which  corresponds  in  some  degree  to  living 
physically  in  the  open  air,  is  the  living  mentally  and  emotionally 
in  the  atmosphere  of  love.  A  large  charity  of  mind,  which 
refuses  absolutely  to  shut  itself  in  little  secluded  places  of 
prejudice,  bigotry  and  contempt  for  others,  and  which  attains 
to  a  great  and  universal  sympathy,  helps,  most  obviously,  to 
open  the  way  to  that  region  of  calm  and  freedom  of  which  we 
have  spoken,  while  conversely  all  petty  enmity,  meanness  and 


294 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


spite,  conspire  to  imprison  the  soul  and  make  its  deliverance 
more  difficult. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  labour  these  points.  As  we  said,  the 
way  to  attain  is  to  sincerely  try  to  attain,  to  consistently  practise 
attainment.  Whoever  does  this  will  find  that  the  way  will 
open  out  by  degrees,  as  of  one  emerging  from  a  vast  and  gloomy 
forest,  till  out  of  darkness  the  path  becomes  clear.  For  whom¬ 
soever  really  tries  there  is  no  failure  ;  for  every  effort  in  that 
region  is  success,  and  every  onward  push,  however  small,  and 
however  little  result  it  may  show,  is  really  a  move  forward, 
and  one  step  nearer  the  light. 


II 

THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 

The  true  nature  of  the  Self  is  a  matter  by  no  means  easy  to 
compass.  We  have  all  probably  at  some  time  or  other  attempted 
to  fathom  the  deeps  of  personality,  and  been  baffled.  Some 
people  say  they  can  quite  distinctly  remember  a  moment  in 
early  childhood,  about  the  age  of  three  (though  the  exact  period 
is  of  course  only  approximate)  when  self-consciousness — the 
awareness  of  being  a  little  separate  Self — first  dawned  in  the 
mind.  It  was  generally  at  some  moment  of  childish  tension — • 
alone  perhaps  in  a  garden,  or  lost  from  the  mother’s  protecting 
hand — that  this  happened  ;  and  it  was  the  beginning  of  a  whole 
range  of  new  experience.  Before  some  such  period  there  is 
in  childhood  strictly  speaking  no  distinct  self-consciousness. 
As  Tennyson  says  {In  Memoriam  xliv)  : 

The  baby  new  to  earth  and  sky, 

What  time  his  tender  palm  is  prest 
Against  the  circle  of  the  breast. 

Hath  never  thought  that  “  This  is  I.” 

It  has  consciousness  truly,  but  no  distinctive  self-consciousness. 
It  is  this  absence  or  deficiency  which  explains  many  things 
which  at  first  sight  seem  obscure  in  the  psychology  of  children 
and  of  animals.  The  baby  (it  has  often  been  noticed)  experi¬ 
ences  little  or  no  sense  of  fear.  It  does  not  know  enough  to 
be  afraid  ;  it  has  never  formed  any  image  of  itself,  as  of  a  thing 
which  might  be  injured.  It  may  shrink  from  actual  pain  or 
discomfort,  but  it  does  not  look  forward — which  is  of  the  essence 
of  fear — to  pain  in  the  future.  Fear  and  self-consciousness 
are  closely  interlinked.  Similarly  with  animals,  we  often  wonder 

how  a  horse  or  a  cow  can  endure  to  stand  out  in  a  field  all  night, 

295 


296  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


exposed  to  cold  and  rain,  in  the  lethargic  patient  way  that 
they  exhibit.  It  is  not  that  they  do  not  feel  the  discomfort,  but 
it  is  that  they  do  not  envisage  themselves  as  enduring  this  pain 
and  suffering  for  all  those  coming  hours  ;  and  as  we  know  with 
ourselves  that  nine-tenths  of  our  miseries  really  consist  in  look¬ 
ing  forward  to  future  miseries,  so  we  understand  that  the  absence 
or  at  any  rate  slight  prevalence  of  self-consciousness  in  animals 
enables  them  to  endure  forms  of  distress  which  would  drive 
us  mad. 

In  time  then  the  babe  arrives  at  self-consciousness  ;  and, 
as  one  might  expect,  the  growing  boy  or  girl  often  becomes 
intensely  aware  of  Self.  His  or  her  self-consciousness  is  crude, 
no  doubt,  but  it  has  very  little  misgiving.  If  the  question 
of  the  nature  of  the  Self  is  propounded  to  the  boy  as  a  problem 
he  has  no  difficulty  in  solving  it.  He  says  “  I  know  well  enough 
who  I  am  :  I  am  the  boy  with  red  hair  what  gave  Jimmy  Brown 
such  a  jolly  good  licking  last  Monday  week.”  He  knows  well 
enough- — or  thinks  he  knows — who  he  is.  And  at  a  later  age, 
though  his  definition  may  change  and  he  may  describe  himself 
chiefly  as  a  good  cricketer  or  successful  in  certain  examinations, 
his  method  is  practically  the  same.  He  fixes  his  mind  on  a 
certain  bundle  of  qualities  and  capacities  which  he  is  supposed 
to  possess,  and  calls  that  bundle  Himself.  And  in  a  more 
elaborate  way  we  most  of  us,  I  imagine,  do  the  same. 

Presently,  however,  with  more  careful  thought,  we  begin  to 
see  difficulties  in  this  view.  I  see  that  directly  I  think  of  my¬ 
self  as  a  certain  bundle  of  qualities — and  for  that  matter  it  is 
of  no  account  whether  the  qualities  are  good  or  bad,  or  in  what 
sort  of  charming  confusion  they  are  mixed — I  see  at  once  that 
I  am  merely  looking  at  a  bundle  of  qualities  :  and  that  the 
real  “  I,”  the  Self,  is  not  that  bundle,  but  is  the  being  inspecting 
the  same- — something  beyond  and  behind,  as  it  were.  So  I 
now  concentrate  my  thoughts  upon  that  inner  Something,  in 
order  to  find  out  what  it  really  is.  I  imagine  perhaps  an  inner 
being,  of  ‘  astral  ’  or  ethereal  nature,  and  possessing  a  new  range 
of  much  finer  and  more  subtle  qualities  than  the  body— a  being 
inhabiting  the  body  and  perceiving  through  its  senses,  but 
quite  capable  of  surviving  the  tenement  in  which  it  dwells — 
and  I  think  of  that  as  the  Self.  But  no  sooner  have  I  taken 
this  step  than  I  perceive  that  I  am  committing  the  same  mistake 
as  before.  I  am  only  contemplating  a  new  image  or  picture, 
and  “  1”  still  remain  beyond  and  behind  that  which  I  con¬ 
template.  No  sooner  do  I  turn  my  attention  on  the  subjective 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


297 


being  than  it  becomes  objective,  and  the  real  subject  retires 
into  the  background.  And  so  on  indefinitely.  I  am  baffled  ; 
and  unable  to  say  positively  what  the  Self  is. 

Meanwhile  there  are  people  who  look  upon  the  foregoing 
speculations  about  an  interior  Self  as  merely  unpractical.  Being 
perhaps  of  a  more  materialistic  type  of  mind  they  fix  their 
attention  on  the  body.  Frankly  they  try  to  define  the  Self 
by  the  body  and  all  that  is  connected  therewith — that  is  by 
the  mental  as  well  as  corporeal  qualities  which  exhibit  them¬ 
selves  in  that  connexion  ;  and  they  say,  “  At  any  rate  the  Self 
— whatever  it  may  be — is  in  some  way  limited  by  the  body  ; 
each  person  studies  the  interest  of  his  body  and  of  the  feelings, 
emotions  and  mentality  directly  associated  with  it,  and  you 
cannot  get  beyond  that  ;  it  isn’t  in  human  nature  to  do  so. 
The  Self  is  limited  by  this  corporeal  phenomenon  and  doubtless 
it  perishes  when  the  body  perishes.”  But  here  again  the  con¬ 
clusion,  though  specious  at  first,  soon  appears  to  be  quite  in¬ 
adequate.  For  though  it  is  possibly  true  that  a  man,  if  left 
alone  in  a  Robinson  Crusoe  life  on  a  desert  island,  might  ulti¬ 
mately  subside  into  a  mere  gratification  of  his  corporeal  needs 
and  of  those  mental  needs  which  were  directly  concerned  with 
the  body,  yet  we  know  that  such  a  case  would  by  no  means 
be  representative.  On  the  contrary  we  know  that  vast  numbers 
of  people  spend  their  lives  in  considering  other  people,  and  often 
so  far  as  to  sacrifice  their  own  bodily  and  mental  comfort  and 
well-being.  The  mother  spends  her  life  thinking  almost  day 
and  night  about  her  babe  and  the  other  children — spending 
all  her  thoughts  and  efforts  on  them.  You  may  call  her  selfish 
if  you  will,  but  her  selfishness  clearly  extends  beyond  her  per¬ 
sonal  body  and  mind,  and  extends  to  the  personalities  of  her 
children  around  her  ;  her  “  body  ” — if  you  insist  on  your  defin¬ 
ition — must  be  held  to  include  the  bodies  of  all  her  children. 
And  again,  the  husband  who  is  toiling  for  the  support  of  the 
family,  he  is  thinking  and  working  and  toiling  and  suffering 
for  a  ‘  self  ’  which  includes  his  wife  and  children.  Do  you 
mean  that  the  whole  family  is  his  “  body  ”  ?  Or  a  man  belongs 
to  some  society,  to  a  church  or  to  a  social  league  of  some  kind, 
and  his  activities  are  largely  ruled  by  the  interests  of  this  larger 
group.  Or  he  sacrifices  his  life — as  many  have  been  doing  of 
late — with  extraordinary  bravery  and  heroism  for  the  sake 
of  the  nation  to  which  he  belongs.  Must  we  say  then  that 
the  whole  nation  is  really  a  part  of  the  man’s  body  ?  Or  again, 
he  gives  his  life  and  goes  to  the  stake  for  his  religion.  Whether 


298  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


his  religion  is  right  or  wrong  does  not  matter,  the  point  is  that 
there  is  that  in  him  which  can  carry  him  far  beyond  his  local 
self  and  the  ordinary  instincts  of  his  physical  organism,  to 
dedicate  his  life  and  powers  to  a  something  of  far  wider  circum¬ 
ference  and  scope. 

Thus  in  the  first  of  these  two  examples  of  a  search  for  the 
nature  of  the  Self  we  are  led  inwards  from  point  to  point,  into 
interior  and  ever  subtler  regions  of  our  being,  and  still  in  the 
end  are  baffled  ;  while  in  the  second  we  are  carried  outwards 
into  an  ever  wider  and  wider  circumference  in  our  quest  of 
the  Ego,  and  still  feel  that  we  have  failed  to  reach  its  ultimate 
nature.  We  are  driven  in  fact  by  these  two  arguments  to  the 
conclusion  that  that  which  we  are  seeking  is  indeed  something 
very  vast — something  far  extending  around,  yet  also  buried 
deep  in  the  hidden  recesses  of  our  minds.  How  far,  how  deep, 
we  do  not  know.  We  can  only  say  that  as  far  as  the  indications 
point  the  true  self  is  profounder  and  more  far-reaching  than 
anything  we  have  yet  fathomed. 

In  the  ordinary  commonplace  life  we  shrink  to  ordinary 
commonplace  selves,  but  it  is  one  of  the  blessings  of  great  ex¬ 
periences,  even  though  they  are  tragic  or  painful,  that  they 
throw  us  out  into  that  enormously  greater  self  to  which  we 
belong.  Sometimes,  in  moments  of  inspiration,  of  intense 
enthusiasm,  of  revelation,  such  as  a  man  feels  in  the  midst  of 
a  battle,  in  moments  of  love  and  dedication  to  another  person, 
and  in  moments  of  religious  ecstasy,  an  immense  world  is 
opened  up  to  the  astonished  gaze  of  the  inner  man,  who  sees 
disclosed  a  self  stretched  far  beyond  anything  he  had  ever 
imagined.  We  have  all  had  experiences  more  or  less  of  that 
kind.  I  have  known  quite  a  few  people,  and  most  of  you  have 
known  some,  who  at  some  time,  even  if  only  once  in  their  lives, 
have  experienced  such  an  extraordinary  lifting  of  the  veil,  an 
opening  out  of  the  back  of  their  minds  as  it  were,  and  have 
had  such  a  vision  of  the  world,  that  they  have  never  afterwards 
forgotten  it.  They  have  seen  into  the  heart  of  creation,  and 
have  perceived  their  union  with  the  rest  of  mankind.  They 
have  had  glimpses  of  a  strange  immortality  belonging  to  them, 
a  glimpse  of  their  belonging  to  a  far  greater  being  than  they 
have  ever  imagined.  Just  once— and  a  man  has  never  for¬ 
gotten  it,  and  even  if  it  has  not  recurred  it  has  coloured  all 
the  rest  of  his  life. 

Now,  this  subject  has  been  thought  about — since  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  world,  I  was  going  to  say — but  it  has  been  thought 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


299 


about  since  the  beginnings  of  history.  Some  three  thousand 
years  ago  certain  groups  of — I  hardly  like  to  call  them  philo¬ 
sophers — but,  let  us  say,  people  who  were  meditating  and  think¬ 
ing  upon  these  problems,  were  in  the  habit  of  locating  them¬ 
selves  in  the  forests  of  Northern  India  ;  and  schools  arose  there. 
In  the  case  of  each  school  some  teacher  went  into  the  woods 
and  collected  groups  of  disciples  around  him,  who  lived  there 
in  his  company  and  listened  to  his  words.  Such  schools  w^ere 
formed  in.  very  considerable  numbers,  and  the  doctrines  of 
these  teachers  were  gathered  together,  generally  by  their  dis¬ 
ciples,  in  notes,  which  notes  were  brought  together  into  little 
pamphlets  or  tracts,  forming  the  books  which  are  called  the 
‘  Upanishads  ’  of  the  Indian  sages.  They  contain  some  extra¬ 
ordinary  words  of  wisdom,  some  of  which  I  want  to  bring  before 
you.  The  conclusions  arrived  at  were  not  so  much  what  we 
should  call  philosophy  in  the  modern  sense.  They  were  not  so 
much  the  result  of  the  analysis  of  the  mind  and  the  following 
out  of  concatenations  of  strict  argument  ;  but  they  were  flashes 
of  intuition  and  experience,  and  all  through  the  ‘  Upanishads  ’ 
you  find  these  extraordinary  flashes  embedded  in  the  midst 
of  a  great  deal  of  what  we  should  call  a  rather  rubbishy  kind 
of  argument,  and  a  good  deal  of  merely  conventional  Brahmanical 
talk  of  those  days.  But  the  people  who  wrote  and  spoke  thus 
had  an  intuition  into  the  heart  of  things  which  I  make  bold  to 
say  very  few  people  in  modern  life  have.  These  ‘  Upanishads, 
however  varibus  their  subjects,  practically  agree  on  one  point 
— in  the  definition  of  the  “  self/’  They  agree  in  saying  that 
the  self  of  each  man  is  continuous  with  and  in  a  sense  identical 
with  the  Self  of  the  universe.  Now  that  seems  an  extraordinary 
\  conclusion,  and  one  which  almost  staggers  the  modern  mind 
to  conceive  of.  But  that  is  the  conclusion,  that  is  the  thread 
which  runs  all  through  the  ‘  Upanishads  ’ — the  identity  of  the 
self  of  each  individual  with  the  self  of  every  other  individual 
throughout  mankind,  and  even  with  the  selves  of  the  animals 
and  other  creatures. 

Those  who  have  read  the  Khandogya  Upanishad  remember 
how  in  that  treatise  the  father  instructs  his  son  Svetaketu  on 
this  very  subject — pointing  him  out  in  succession  the  objects 
of  Nature  and  on  each  occasion  exhorting  him  to  realise  his 
identity  with  the  very  essence  of  the  object — “  Tat  twam  asi, 
That  thou  art.”  He  calls  Svetaketu’s  attention  to  a  tree.  What 
is  the  essence  of  the  tree  ?  When  they  have  rejected  the  external 
characteristics — the  leaves,  the  branches,  etc. — and  agreed 


300  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


that  the  sap  is  the  essence,  then  the  father  says,  "  Tat  twam  asi 
— That  thou  art.”  He  gives  his  son  a  crystal  of  salt,  and  asks 
him  what  is  the  essence  of  that.  The  son  is  puzzled.  Clearly 
neither  the  form  nor  the  transparent  quality  are  essential.  The 
father  says,  “  Put  the  crystal  in  water.”  Then  when  it  is  melted 
he  says,  “  Where  is  the  crystal  ?  ”  The  son  replies,  “  I  do  not 
know.  ’  “  Dip  your  finger  in  the  bowl,”  says  the  father,  ”  and 

taste.”  Ihen  Svetaketu  dips  here  and  there,  and  everywhere 
there  is  a  salt  flavour.  They  agree  that  that  is  the  essence  of 
salt  ;  and  the  father  says  again,  ”  Tat  twam  asi.”  I  am  of  course 
neither  defending  nor  criticising  the  scientific  attitude  here 
adopted.  I  am  only  pointing  out  that  this  psychological  identi¬ 
fication  of  the. observer  with  the  object  observed  runs  through 
the  Upanishads,  and  is  I  think  worthy  of  the  deepest  consider¬ 
ation. 

In  the  ‘  Bhagavat  Gita,’  which  is  a  later  book,  the  author 
speaks  of  ”  him  whose  soul  is  purified,  whose  self  is  the  Self 
of  all  creatures.”  A  phrase  like  that  challenges  opposition. 
It  is  so  bold,  so  sweeping,  and  so  immense,  that  we  hesitate  to 
give  our  adhesion  to  what  it  implies.  But  what  does  it  mean 
whose  soul  is  purified  ”  ?  I  believe  that  it  means  this, 
that  with  most  of  us  our  souls  are  anything  but  clean  or  purified, 
they  are  by  no  means  transparent,  so  that  all  the  time 
we  are  continually  deceiving  ourselves  and  making  clouds 
between  us  and  others.  We  are  all  the  time  grasping  things 
from  other  people,  and  if  not  in  words,  are  mentally  boasting 
ourselves  against  others,  trying  to  think  of  our  own  superiority 
to  the  rest  of  the  people  around  us.  Sometimes  we  try  to  run 
our  neighbours  down  a  little,  just  to  show  that  they  are  not 
quite  equal  to  our  level.  We  try  to  snatch  from  others  some 
things  which  belong  to  them,  or  take  credit  to  ourselves  for 
things  to  which  we  are  not  fairly  entitled.  But  all  the  time  we 
are  acting  so  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  we  are  weaving  veils 
between  ourselves  and  others.  You  cannot  have  dealings  with 
another  person  in  a  purely  truthful  way,  and  be  continually 
trying  to  cheat  that  person  out  of  money,  or  out  of  his  good 
name  and  reputation.  If  you  are  doing  that,  however  much 
in  the  background  you  may  be  doing  it,  you  are  not  looking 
the  person  fairly  in  the  face — there  is  a  cloud  between  you  all 
the  time.  So  long  as  your  soul  is  not  purified  from  all  these 
really  absurd  and  ridiculous  little  desires  and  superiorities  and 
self-satisfactions,  which  make  up  so  much  of  our  lives,  just 
so  long  as  that  happens  you  do  not  and  you  cannot  see  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


301 


truth.  But  when  it  happens  to  a  person,  as  it  does  happen 
in  times  of  great  and  deep  and  bitter  experience  ;  when  it 
happens  that  all  these  trumpery  little  objects  of  life  are  swept 
away  ;  then  occasionally,  with  astonishment,  the  soul  sees  that 
It  is  also  the  soul  of  the  others  around.  Even  if  it  does  not 
become  aware  of  an  absolute  identity,  it  perceives  that  there 
is  a  deep  relationship  and  communion  between  itself  and  others, 
and  it  comes  to  understand  how  it  may  really  be  true  that  to 
him  whose  soul  is  purified  the  self  is  literally  the  Self  of  all 
creatures. 

Ordinary  men  and  those  who  go  on  more  intellectual  and  less 
intuitional  lines  will  say  that  these  ideas  are  really  contrary  to 
human  nature  and  to  nature  generally.  Yet  I  think  that  those 
people  who  say  this  in  the  name  of  Science  are  extremely  un¬ 
scientific,  because  a  very  superficial  glance  at  nature  reveals 
that  the  very  same  thing  is  taking  place  throughout  nature. 
Consider  the  madrepores,  corallines,  or  sponges.  You  find,  for 
instance,  that  constantly  the  little  self  of  the  coralline  or  sponge  is 
functioning  at  the  end  of  a  stem  and  casting  forth  its  tentacles 
into  the  water  to  gain  food  and  to  breathe  the  air  out  of  the 
water.  That  little  animalcule  there,  which  is  living  in  that  way, 
imagines  no  doubt  that  it  is  working  all  for  itself,  and  yet  it  is 
united  down  the  stem  at  whose  extremity  it  stands,  with  the  life 
of  the  whole  madrepore  or  sponge  to  which  it  belongs.  There  is 
the  common  life  of  the  whole  and  the  individual  life  of  each, 
and  while  the  little  creature  at  the  end  of  the  stem  is  thinking 
(if  it  is  conscious  at  all)  that  its  whole  energies  are  absorbed  in 
its  own  maintenance,  it  really  is  feeding  the  common  life  through 
the  stem  to  which  it  belongs,  and  in  its  turn  it  is  being  fed  by 
that  common  life. 

You  have  only  to  look  at  an  ordinary  tree  to  see  the  same 
thing  going  on.  Each  little  leaf  on  a  tree  may  very  naturally 
have  sufficient  consciousness  to  believe  that  it  is  an  entirely 
separate  being  maintaining  itself  in  the  sunlight  and  the  air, 
withering  away  and  dying  when  the  winter  comes  on  and 
there  is  an  end  of  it.  It  probably  does  not  realise  that  all  the 
time  it  is  being  supported  by  the  sap  which  flows  from  the  trunk 
of  the  tree,  and  that  in  its  turn  it  is  feeding  the  tree,  too — that 
its  self  is  the  self  of  the  whole  tree.  If  the  leaf  could  really 
understand  itself,  it  would  see  that  its  self  was  deeply,  intimately 
connected,  practically  one  with  the  life  of  the  whole  tree. 
Therefore,  I  say  that  this  Indian  view  is  not  unscientific.  On 
the  contrary,  I  am  sure  that  it  is  thoroughly  scientific. 


302  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Let  us  take  another  passage,  out  of  the  ‘  Svetasvatara  Upan- 
ishad/  which,  speaking  of  the  self  says  :  “  He  is  the  one  God, 
hidden  in  all  creatures,  all  pervading,  the  self  within  all,  watch¬ 
ing  over  all  works,  shadowing  all  creatures,  the  witness,  the 
perceiver,  the  only  one  free  from  qualities.” 

And  now  we  can  return  to  the  point  where  we  left  the  argu¬ 
ment  at  the  beginning  of  this  discourse.  We  said,  you  remember, 
that  the  Self  is  certainly  no  mere  bundle  of  qualities — that 
the  very  nature  of  the  mind  forbids  us  thinking  that.  For 
however  fine  and  subtle  any  quality  or  group  of  qualities  may 
be,  we  are  irresistibly  compelled  by  the  nature  of  the  mind 
itself  to  look  for  the  Self,  not  in  any  quality  or  qualities,  but 
in  the  being  that  perceives  those  qualities.  The  passage  I  have 
just  quoted  says  that  being  is  “  The  one  God,  hidden  in  all 
creatures,  all  pervading,  the  self  within  all  .  .  .  the  witness, 
the  perceiver,  the  only  one  free  from  qualities.”  And  the  more 
you  think  about  it  the  clearer  I  think  you  will  see  that  this 
passage  is  correct — that  there  can  be  only  one  witness,  one 
perceiver,  and  that  is  the  one  God  hidden  in  all  creatures,  “  Sarva 
Sakshi,”  the  Universal  Witness. 

Have  you  ever  had  that  curious  feeling,  not  uncommon, 
especially  in  moments  of  vivid  experience  and  emotion,  that 
there  was  at  the  back  of  your  mind  a  witness,  watching  every¬ 
thing  that  was  going  on,  yet  too  deep  for  your  ordinary  thought 
to  grasp  ?  Has  it  not  occurred  to  you — in  a  moment  say  of 
great  danger  when  the  mind  was  agitated  to  the  last  degree  by 
fears  and  anxieties — suddenly  to  become  perfectly  calm  and 
collected,  to  realise  that  nothing  can  harm  you,  that  you  are 
identified  with  some  great  and  universal  being  lifted  far  over 
this  mortal  world  and  unaffected  by  its  storms  ?  Is  it  not 
obvious  that  the  real  Self  must  be  something  of  this  nature, 
a  being  perceiving  all,  but  itself  remaining  unperceived  ?  For 
indeed  if  it  were  perceived  it  would  fall  under  the  head  of  some 
definable  quality,  and  so  becoming  the  object  of  thought  would 
cease  to  be  the  subject,  would  cease  to  be  the  Self. 

The  witness  is  and  must  be  “  free  from  qualities.”  For 
since  it  is  capable  of  perceiving  all  qualities  it  must  obviously 
not  be  itself  imprisoned  or  tied  in  any  quality — it  must  either 
be  entirely  without  quality,  or  if  it  have  the  potentiality 
of  quality  in  it,  it  must  have  the  potentiality  of  every 
quality  ;  but  in  either  case  it  cannot  be  in  bondage  to  any 
quality,  and  in  either  case  it  would  appear  that  there  can 
be  only  one  such  ultimate  Witness  in  the  universe.  For  if 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF  303 

I 

there  were  two  or  more  such  Witnesses,  then  we  should  be 
compelled  to  suppose  them  distinguished  from  one  another  by 
something,  and  that  something  could  only  be  a  difference  of 
qualities,  which  would  be  contrary  to  our  conclusion  that  such 
a  Witness  cannot  be  in  bondage  to  any  quality. 

There  is  then  I  take  it — as  the  text  in  question  says — only 
one  Witness,  one  Self,  throughout  the  universe.  It  is  hidden 
in  all  living  things,  men  and  animals  and  plants  ;  it  pervades 
all  creation.  In  every  thing  that  has  consciousness  it  is 
the  Self;  it  watches  over  all  operations,  it  overshadows  all 
creatures,  it  moves  in  the  depths  of  our  hearts,  the  per- 
ceiver,  the  only  being  that  is  cognisant  of  all  and  yet  free 
from  all. 

Once  you  really  appropriate  this  truth,  and  assimilate  it  in 
the  depths  of  your  mind,  a  vast  change  (you  can  easily  imagine) 
will  take  place  within  you.  The  whole  world  will  be  trans¬ 
formed,  and  every  thought  and  act  of  which  you  are  capable 
will  take  on  a  different  colour  and  complexion.  Indeed  the 
revolution  will  be  so  vast  that  it  would  be  quite  impossible  for 
me  within  the  limits  of  this  discourse  to  describe  it.  I  will 
however,  occupy  the  rest  of  my  time  in  dealing  with  some  points 
and  conclusions,  and  some  mental  changes  which  will  flow 
perfectly  naturally  from  this  axiomatic  change  taking  place 
at  the  very  root  of  life. 

“  Free  from  qualities.”  We  generally  pride  ourselves  a 
little  on  our  qualities.  Some  of  us  think  a  great  deal  of  our 
good  qualities,  and  some  of  us  are  rather  ashamed  of  our  bad 
ones  !  I  would  say  :  “Do  not  trouble  very  much  about  all 
that.  What  good  qualities  you  have — well  you  may  be  quite 
sure  they  do  not  really  amount  to  much ;  and  what  bad 
qualities,  you  may  be  sure  they  are  not  very  important  !  Do 
not  make  too  much  fuss  about  either.  Do  you  see  ?  The 
thing  is  that  you,  you  yourself,  are  not  any  of  your  qualities— 
you  are  the  being  that  perceives  them.  The  thing  to  see  to  is 
that  they  should  not  confuse  you,  bamboozle  you,  and  hide 
you  from  the  knowledge  of  yourself  that  they  should  not  be 
erected  into  a  screen,  to  hide  you  from  others,  or  the  others 
from  you.  If  you  cease  from  running  after  qualities,  then 
after  a  little  time  your  soul  will  become  purified,  and  you  will 
know  that  your  self  is  the  Self  of  all  creatures  ;  and  when  you 
can  feel  that  you  will  know  that  the  other  things  do  not  much 
matter. 

Sometimes  people  are  so  awfully  good  that  their  very  good- 


304  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


ness  hides  them  from  other  people.  They  really  cannot  be 
on  a  level  with  others,  and  they  feel  that  the  others  are  far 
below  them.  Consequently  their  ‘  selves  ’  are  blinded  or  hidden 
by  their  ‘  goodness/  It  is  a  sad  end  to  come  to  !  And  some¬ 
times  it  happens  that  very  ‘  bad  ’  people — just  because  they 
are  so  bad — do  not  erect  any  screens  or  veils  between  them¬ 
selves  and  others.  Indeed  they  are  only  too  glad  if  others 
will  recognise  them,  or  if  they  may  be  allowed  to  recognise 
others.  And  so,  after  all,  they  come  nearer  the  truth  than  the 
very  good  people. 

“  The  Self  is  free  from  qualities.’ ’  That  thing  which  is  so 
deep,  which  belongs  to  all,  it  either — as  I  have  already  said — 
has  all  qualities,  or  it  has  none.  You,  to  whom  I  am  speaking 
now,  your  qualities,  good  and  bad,  are  all  mine.  I  am  perfectly 
willing  to  accept  them.  They  are  all  right  enough  and  in 
place — if  one  can  only  find  the  places  for  them.  But  I  know 
that  in  most  cases  they  have  got  so  confused  and  mixed  up 
that  they  cause  great  conflict  and  pain  in  the  souls  that  harbour 
them.  If  you  attain  to  knowing  yourself  to  be  other  than 
and  separate  from  the  qualities,  then  you  will  pass  below  and 
beyond  them  all.  You  will  be  able  to  accept  all  your  qualities 
and  harmonise  them,  and  your  soul  will  be  at  peace.  You  will 
be  free  from  the  domination  of  qualities  then  because  you  will 
know  that  among  all  the  multitudes  of  them  there  are  none 
of  any  importance  ! 

If  you  should  happen  some  day  to  reach  that  state  of  mind 
in  connexion  with  which  this  revelation  comes,  then  you  will 
find  the  experience  a  most  extraordinary  one.  You  will  become 
conscious  that  there  is  no  barrier  in  your  path  ;  that  the  way 
is  open  in  all  directions  ;  that  all  men  and  women  belong  to 
you,  are  part  of  you.  You  will  feel  that  there  is  a  great  open 
immense  world  around,  which  you  had  never  suspected  before, 
which  belongs  to  you,  and  the  riches  of  which  are  all  yours, 
waiting  for  you.  It  may,  of  course,  take  centuries  and  thousands 
of  years  to  realise  this  thoroughly,  but  there  it  is.  You  are 
just  at  the  threshold,  peeping  in  at  the  door.  What  did  Shake¬ 
speare  say  ?  “  To  thine  own  self  be  true,  and  it  must  follow 

as  the  night  the  day,  thou  can’st  not  then  be  false  to  any 
man.”  What  a  profound  bit  of  philosophy  in  three  lines  ! 
I  doubt  if  anywhere  the  basis  of  all  human  life  has  been  expressed 
more  perfectly  and  tersely. 

One  of  the  Upanishads  (the  Maitr&yana-Brahmana)  says : 
“  The  happiness  belonging  to  a  mind,  which  through  deep 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


305 


inwardness  1  (or  understanding)  has  been  washed  clean  and  has 
entered  into  the  Self,  is  a  thing  beyond  the  power  of  words  to 
describe  :  it  can  only  be  perceived  by  an  inner  faculty.”  Observe 
the  conviction,  the  intensity  with  which  this  joy,  this  happiness 
is  described,  which  comes  to  those  whose  minds  have  been 
washed  clean  (from  all  the  silly  trumpery  sediment  of  self¬ 
thought)  and  have  become  transparent,  so  that  the  great  uni¬ 
versal  Being  residing  there  in  the  depths  can  be  perceived. 
What  sorrow  indeed,  what  grief,  can  come  to  such  an  one  who 
has  seen  this  vision  ?  It  is  truly  a  thing  beyond  the  power  of 
words  to  describe  :  it  can  only  be  perceived — and  that  by  an 
inner  faculty.  The  external  apparatus  of  thought  is  of  no  use. 
Argument  is  of  no  use.  But  experience  and  direct  perception 
are  possible  ;  and  probably  all  the  experiences  of  life  and  of 
mankind  through  the  ages  are  gradually  deepening  our  powers 
of  perception  to  that  point  where  the  vision  will  at  last  rise 
upon  the  inward  eye. 

Another  text,  from  the  Brihad-Aranyaka  Upanishad  (which 
I  have  already  quoted  in  the  paper  on  “  Rest”),  says  :  “  If  a 
man  worship  the  Self  only  as  his  true  state,  his  work  cannot 
fail,  for  whatever  he  desires,  that  he  obtains  from  the  Self.” 
Is  that  not  magnificent  ?  If  you  truly  realise  your  identity 
and  union  with  the  great  Self  who  inspires  and  informs  the 
world,  then  obviously  whatever  you  desire  the  great  Self  will 
desire,  and  the  whole  world  will  conspire  to  bring  it  to  you. 
“  He  maketh  the  winds  his  angels,  and  the  flaming  fires  his 
ministers.”  [I  need  not  say  that  I  am  not  asking  you  to  try 
and  identify  yourself  with  the  great  Self  universal  in  order  to 
get  riches,  “  opulence,”  and  other  things  of  that  kind  which 
you  desire  ;  because  in  that  quest  you  will  probably  not  succeed. 
The  Great  Self  is  not  such  a  fool  as  to  be  taken  in  in  that  way. 
It  may  be  true — and  it  is  true — that  if  ye  seek  first  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you  ;  but  you 
must  seek  it  first,  not  second.] 

x  The  word  in  the  Max  Muller  translation  is  “  meditation.  '  But 
that  is,  I  think,  a  somewhat  misleading  word.  It  suggests  to  most 
people  the  turning  inward  of  the  thinking  faculty  to  grope  and  delve 
in  the  interior  of  the  mind.  This  is  just  what  should  not  be  done. 
Meditation  in  the  proper  sense  should  mean  the  inward  deepening 
of  feeling  and  consciousness  till  the  region  of  the  universal  self  is 
reached  ;  but  thought  should  not  interfere  there.  That  should  be 
turned  on  outward  things  to  mould  them  into  expression  of  the  inner 
consciousness. 


20 


306 


PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Here  is  a  passage  from  Towards  Democracy  :  “  As  space  spreads 
everywhere,  and  all  things  move  and  change  within  it,  but  it 
moves  not  nor  changes, 

“  So  I  am  the  space  within  the  soul,  of  which  the  space  with¬ 
out  is  but  the  similitude  and  mental  image  ; 

“  Comest  thou  to  inhabit  me,  thou  hast  the  entrance  to  all 
life— death  shall  no  longer  divide  thee  from  whom  thou 
lovest. 

“  I  am  the  Sun  that  shines  upon  all  creatures  from  within — 
gazest  thou  upon  me,  thou  shalt  be  filled  with  joy  eternal.” 

Yes,  this  great  sun  is  there,  always  shining,  but  most  of  the 
time  it  is  hidden  from  us  by  the  clouds  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
and  we  fail  to  see  it.  We  complain  of  being  out  in  the  cold  ; 
and  in  the  cold,  for  the  time  being,  no  doubt  we  are  ;  but  our 
return  to  the  warmth  and  the  light  has  now  become  possible. 

Thus  at  last  the  Ego,  the  mortal  immortal  self — disclosed  at 
first  in  darkness  and  fear  and  ignorance  in  the  growing  babe 
— finds  its  true  identity.  For  a  long  period  it  is  baffled  in  trying 
to  understand  what  it  is.  It  goes  through  a  vast  experience. 
It  is  tormented  by  the  sense  of  separation  and  alienation — 
alienation  from  other  people,  and  persecution  by  all  the  great 
powers  and  forces  of  the  universe  ;  and  it  is  pursued  by  a  sense 
of  its  own  doom.  Its  doom  truly  is  irrevocable.  The  hour  of 
fulfilment  approaches,  the  veil  lifts,  and  the  soul  beholds  at 
last  its  own  true  being. 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  external  world  around  us 
as  a  nasty  tiresome  old  thing  of  which  all  we  can  say  for  certain 
is  that  it  works  by  a  "  law  of  cussedness  ” — so  that,  which¬ 
ever  way  we  want  to  go,  that  way  seems  always  barred,  and 
we  only  bump  against  blind  walls  without  making  any  progress. 
But  that  uncomfortable  state  of  affairs  arises  from  ourselves. 
Once  we  have  passed  a  certain  barrier,  which  at  present  looks 
so  frowning  and  impossible,  but  which  fades  into  nothing  im¬ 
mediately  we  have  passed  it — once  we  have  found  the  open 
secret  of  identity — then  the  way  is  indeed  open  in  every 
direction. 

The  world  in  which  we  live — the  world  into  which  we  are 
tumbled  as  children  at  the  first  onset  of  self-consciousness — 
denies  this  great  fact  of  unity.  It  is  a  world  in  which  the 
principle  of  separation  rules.  Instead  of  a  common  life  and 
union  with  each  other,  the  contrary  principle  (especially  in  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SELF 


307 


later  civilisations)  has  been  the  one  recognised — and  to  such 
an  extent  that  always  there  prevails  the  obsession  of  separation, 
and  the  conviction  that  each  person  is  an  isolated  unit.  The 
whole  of  our  modern  society  has  been  founded  on  this  delusive 
idea,  which  is  false.  You  go  into  the  markets,  and  every  man’s 
hand  is  against  the  others — that  is  the  ruling  principle.  You 
go  into  the  Law  Courts  where  justice  is,  or  should  be,  admin¬ 
istered,  and  you  find  that  the  principle  which  denies  unity  is 
the  one  that  prevails.  The  criminal  (whose  actions  have  really 
been  determined  by  the  society  around  him)  is  cast  out,  dis- 
acknowledged,  and  condemned  to  further  isolation  in  a  prison 
cell.  '  Property  ’  again  is  the  principle  which  rules  and  deter¬ 
mines  our  modern  civilisation — namely  that  which  is  proper 
to,  or  can  be  appropriated  by,  each  person,  as  against  the  others. 
In  the  moral  world  the  doom  of  separation  comes  to  us  in  the 
shape  of  the  sense  of  sin.  For  sin  is  separation.  Sin  is  actually 
(and  that  is  its  only  real  meaning)  the  separation  from  others, 
and  the  non-acknowledgment  of  unity.  And  so  it  has  come 
about  that  during  all  this  civilisation-period  the  sense  of  sin 
has  ruled  and  ranged  to  such  an  extraordinary  degree.  Society 
has  been  built  on  a  false  base,  not  true  to  fact  or  life  and 
has  had  a  dim  uneasy  consciousness  of  its  falseness.  Mean¬ 
while  at  the  heart  of  it  all — and  within  all  the  frantic  external 
strife  and  warfare — there  is  all  the  time  this  real  great  life  brood¬ 
ing.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  as  we  said  before,  is  still  within. 

The  word  Democracy  indicates  something  of  the  kind — the 
rule  of  the  Demos,  that  is  of  the  common  life.  The  coming  of 
that  will  transform,  not  only  our  Markets  and  our  Law  Courts 
and  our  sense  of  Property,  and  other  institutions,  into  some¬ 
thing  really  great  and  glorious  instead  of  the  dismal  masses  of 
rubbish  which  they  at  present  are  ;  but  it  will  transform  our 
sense  of  Morality. 

Our  Morality  at  present  consists  in  the  idea  of  self-goodness 
— one  of  the  most  pernicious  and  disgusting  ideas  which  has 
ever  infested  the  human  brain.  If  any  one  should  follow  and 
assimilate  what  I  have  just  said  about  the  true  nature  of  the 
Self  he  will  realise  that  it  will  never  again  be  possible  for  him 
to  congratulate  himself  on  his  own  goodness  or  morality  or 
superiority  ;  for  the  moment  he  does  so  he  will  separate  him¬ 
self  from  the  universal  life,  and  proclaim  the  sin  of  his  own 
separation.  I  agree  that  this  conclusion  is  for  some  people  a 
most  sad  and  disheartening  one— but  it  cannot  be  helped  ! 
A  man  may  truly  be  ‘  good  ’  and  *  moral  ’  in  some  real  sense  , 


308  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


but  only  on  the  condition  that  he  is  not  aware  of  it.  He  can 
only  be  good  when  not  thinking  about  the  matter  ;  to  be  conscious 
of  one’s  own  goodness  is  already  to  have  fallen  ! 

We  began  by  thinking  of  the  self  as  just  a  little  local  self  ,* 
then  we  extended  it  to  the  family,  the  cause,  the  nation — ever 
to  a  larger  and  vaster  being.  At  last  there  comes  a  time  when 
we  recognise — or  see  that  we  shall  have  to  recognise — an  inner 
Equality  between  ourselves  and  all  others  ;  not  of  course  an 
external  equality — for  that  would  be  absurd  and  impossible 
— but  an  inner  and  profound  and  universal  Equality.  And  so 
we  come  again  to  the  mystic  root-conception  of  Democracy. 

And  now  it  will  be  said  :  “  But  after  all  this  talk  you  have 
not  defined  the  Self,  or  given  us  any  intellectual  outline  of  what 
you  mean  by  the  word.”  No — and  I  do  not  intend  to.  If 
I  could,  by  any  sort  of  copybook  definition,  describe  and  show 
the  boundaries  of  myself,  I  should  obviously  lose  all  interest 
in  the  subject.  Nothing  more  dull  could  be  imagined.  I  may 
be  able  to  define  and  describe  fairly  exhaustively  this  inkpot 
on  the  table  ;  but  for  you  or  for  me  to  give  the  limits  and 
boundaries  of  ourselves  is,  I  am  glad  to  say,  impossible.  That 
does  not,  however,  mean  that  we  cannot  feel  and  be  conscious 
of  ourselves,  and  of  our  relations  to  other  selves,  and  to  the 
great  Whole.  On  the  contrary  I  think  it  is  clear  that  the  more 
vividly  we  feel  our  organic  unity  with  the  whole,  the  less  shall 
we  be  able  to  separate  off  the  local  self  and  enclose  it  within 
any  definition.  I  take  it  that  we  can  and  do  become  ever  more 
vividly  conscious  of  our  true  Self,  but  that  the  mental  statement 
of  it  always  does  and  probably  always  will  lie  beyond  us.  All 
life  and  all  our  action  and  experience  consist  in  the  gradual 
manifestation  of  that  which  is  within  us — of  our  inner  being. 
In  that  sense — and  reading  its  handwriting  on  the  outer  world 
—we  come  to  know  the  soul’s  true  nature  more  and  more 
intimately  ;  we  enter  into  the  mind  of  that  great  artist  who 
beholds  himself  in  his  own  creation. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abraham,  sacrifice  of  ram,  118 
Abydos  mystery  play,  22 
Acosta  quoted,  67,  185 
Adonis-legend,  22,  200  ;  A.  as 
Saviour,  129 

Advaita,  meaning  of,  269 
African  tribes,  58,  120 
Ahknaton,  Pharaoh,  243 
Alexandrian  influences,  203 
Altamira,  caves  of,  15 
Amelioration  of  pagan  customs, 
1 18 

Andromeda,  meaning  of  the  word, 
159 

Animals,  adored  by  primitives, 
ch.  iv ;  despised  and  mal¬ 
treated  by  moderns,  224 
Animal  masks,  94,  95  ;  meaning 
of,  241 

Animism,  15,  57  sq.  ;  justified, 

11,  95,  97,  259,  260;  a  pre- 
animistic  stage,  98 
Annunciation,  the,  1 59 
Anthropomorphism,  15  ;  justi¬ 
fied,  95,  97  ;  a  temporary 
stage,  99  ;  but  necessary,  102 
Apis  gives  place  to  Amun  :  the 
Bull  to  the  Ram,  47 
Apollo,  born  with  only  one  hair, 
27  ;  connected  with  the  wolf, 
94  ;  dancing  round  altar  of, 
170 

Apollonius  of  Tyana,  243 
Apostles’  Creed,  the,  as  a  Pagan 
creed,  164 

Apuleius  quoted,  241 


Aries,  the  place  of  the  Sun  in 
Spring,  37,  39,  46 
Art,  origin  in  magic  ritual,  1 5  ; 
as  evidence  of  the  cosmic 
life,  255 

Art  of  learning,  292 
Artemis  or  Diana,  connected  with 
bear-worship,  94  ;  sacrifices 
on  her  altar,  118 
Asher  ah,  translated  “  grove  ”  in 
the  Bible,  182 
x\shtoreth,  182 

Astarte,  temple  of,  at  Aphaca, 

23 

Atlantis,  island  of,  134 
Atonement,  104 

Attis-legend,  23  ;  rites,  42,  43, 
1 12  ;  A.  as  Saviour,  129,  248 
Augustine,  St.,  quoted,  26,  204 
his  barbarous  creed,  108 
Aurelian,  emperor,  cult  of  Mith- 
raism,  204 

Australian  natives,  11,  58,  61, 
89  ;  rites,  122  ;  ordeals,  123  ; 
theories  about  conception,  79, 
158  ;  marriage  customs,  195 
Aztec  rites,  28  n.,  67,  73,  105-108 

Baal,  priests  of,  72 
B&b,  life  of  the,  214  ;  persecu¬ 
tion,  215 

B&bism,  religion  of,  153,  214; 
Church  of,  216 

Bacchus  or  Dionysus,  as  Saviour, 
129,  130 

Balder,  as  Saviour,  160 


310 


INDEX 


311 


Baptism  by  blood,  43,  44,  121  ; 
Baptism  and  Confirmation, 

1 19  ;  correspond  to  Initiation, 
120,  1 21  ;  but  inadequately, 

’  126,  191 

Baring-Gould  quoted,  129 
Bath-kol,  72 

Bauer,  Bruno,  quoted,  209 
Bear-sacrifice,  63,  112 
Bhagavad  gita,  268,  291,  300 
Birth  of  a  new  Industrial  Order, 
276-7 

Blake,  William,  vision  of  a  Tree, 
79 

Bough,  the  Golden,  quoted,  see 
Dr.  Frazer 

Bouphonia  at  Athens,  63,  112 
Browne,  Edward  G.,  quoted,  216 
Bucke,  Dr.,  quoted,  225,  229, 
236 

Buddha  as  Saviour,  129 
Bull,  constellation  of,  34  ;  re¬ 
demption  by  blood  of,  41, 
42,  43,  63  ;  gives  place  to 
the  Lamb,  47  ;  sacrifice  in 
Greece,  62 
Bull-roarer,  the,  72 
Burmese,  the,  magic  in  Nature, 

79 

Burton,  Richard,  quoted,  182 
Bushmen,  15  ;  praise  of,  145 

Calendar,  Julian,  27  ;  generally, 
28,  29,  3° 

Camel-sacrifice,  Arabian,  60 

Catlin  quoted,  71,  124 

Caves,  birth  of  gods  in,  27,  29  ; 

meaning,  34 
Celsus  quoted,  21 1 
Cheetham,  Dr.,  quoted,  235,  239, 
243 

Chests  or  Arks,  sacred,  240  n. 
Chetah  and  Puma,  companions 
of  early  man,  75 
“  Children  of  God,”  182 
Child-state,  genius  of,  173  ;  supe¬ 
rior  to  maturity,  174 
Chinese  beliefs,  160 


Christ,  putting  on,  122,  123 
Christian  Church,  pretended 
unique,  11,  19  j  its  barbari¬ 
ties,  108,  109,  1 17,  257; 

suppression  of  rival  teachings, 
130,  155.  2°5  i  its  pagan 

character  at  first,  180  ;  anti- 
sexual  later,  18 1  ;  individual¬ 
istic  in  its  teaching,  190 ; 
gradual  corruption  of,  207 
Christianity,  spiritual  signifi¬ 
cance  of,  128  ;  one  phase  of 
the  great  World-religion,  128, 
198,  259;  corrupted  by 

commercialism,  191  ;  begin¬ 
nings  of,  ch.  xiii ;  borrowings 
from  Mithraism,  204  ;  decay 
of,  208  ;  democratic  tendency 
of,  220  ;  definition  of,  257, 
258  ;  exodus  of,  268 
Christmas  Day,  fixed,  26,  27  ; 

its  meaning,  27-30 
Christ-myth,  the,  209,  210 
Christos,  the,  meaning  of,  202, 

235 

Church  of  the  Future,  263  sq. 
Cinderella  myth,  237 
Circling  of  the  globe,  285 
Civilization,  origins  of,  15  ,*  a 
parenthesis  in  evolution,  97  ; 
compared  with  Christianity , 
257 

Colenso,  Bishop,  and  the  Zulus, 
178 

Commercialism  tottering  to  its 
fall,  276 

Communal  sense,  in  animals,  251  ; 

in  the  future,  276 
Communion-table  originally  an 
altar,  244;  Holy  Communion, 

67  .  .  . 

Comte’s  church  of  Positivism,  264 

Consciousness,  its  three  stages, 
13,  140,  222,  235  ;  as  expla¬ 
nation  of  world-religion,  ch. 
xiv,  also  pp.  16  and  17  > 
cosmic,  102,  139,  142,  295- 
308 


312  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Consciousness,  third  stage  of, 
231  sq.,  235,  250 ;  as  final 
religion,  268 

Corn-rites,  84 ;  associated  with 
Virgo,  34 ;  corn-spirit  seen 
in  the  ear  of  corn,  82,  83  ; 
sacrifices  to,  84 

Crawley,  E.  A.,  quoted,  n,  65, 
196,  229,  246,  249 
Creation,  Art  of,  quoted,  142 
Creative  spirit  of  mankind,  218 
Crucifixion,  the,  prefigured  in 
Paganism,  23,  24,  42 
Crux  A  ns  at  a,  the,  183 
Cumont,  Franz,  quoted,  44,  201, 
204,  220 

Cybele,  the  Earth-mother,  rites, 
45.  157 

Cyclones,  a  psychological  symbol, 
284 

Dancing  as  a  rite,  ch.  xi,  p.  231  ; 
for  rain,  167  ;  for  success  in 
hunting,  168  ;  in  war,  168  ; 
initiation  dances,  169  ;  mys¬ 
tery  dances,  169  ;  in  worship 
of  the  gods,  170 ;  naked  dances, 

1 71;  orgiastic  and  Bacchana¬ 
lian,  172  ;  at  the  vintage,  171  ; 
as  nurse  of  the  Drama,  172  ; 
dance  of  the  Seises  at  Seville, 
266 

Daubing  with  clay,  etc.,  125 
Death,  not  always  feared  by 
primitives,  150 
Delilah,  28 

Demeter  and  Persephone,  legend 
and  rites,  73 

Democracy,  germs  of,  in  Indian 
teaching,  254  ;  the  true  D., 

2  55 

Denderah,  Temple  of,  31 
Devaki,  160 

Devil,  wiles  of,  25,  26,  155 
Devil-dancing,  177 
Devil’s  Pulpit,  the,  10 
Diana,  or  Artemis,  of  the  Ephe¬ 
sians,  86,  161 


Dinkas,  the,  58,  75 

Dionysus  or  Bacchus  as  Saviour, 

52,  205  ;  dismemberment, 
death  and  resurrection,  52, 
53  ;  rites,  65,  66,  128 

Dismemberment  of  gods,  52,  53, 
66,  152 

Doane,  Bible  myths,  quoted,  50, 
51,  66 

Drews,  professor  A.,  quoted, 

203,  209 

Dupuis  quoted,  10,  30  n.,  32  n., 

53.  160 

Earth,  the,  worship  of,  as  Gaia, 
Demeter,  Cybele,  etc.,  73, 
157 

Ecliptic,  the,  38 

Ecstasy,  242,  298 

Effort,  all  genuine  effort  means 
success,  294 

Ego,  the;  what  is  it  ?  296-7  ;  not 
limited  by  the  body,  297  ; 
finds  its  true  nature,  306-8 
Ekagrata,  one-pointedness,  250 
Eleusis,  pilgrimage  at,  240 
Ellis,  Havelock,  quoted,  146, 
188,  230 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  quoted,  133 
Emu-totem  ceremony,  61,  62 
Enoch,  book  of,  202  ;  Secrets  of, 
213 

Equality,  inner,  308 
Eros  and  Psyche  myth,  238, 
249 

Esquimaux  rites,  33,  123 
Etruscan  creeds,  160 
Eucharist,  rites,  Christian  and 
pagan,  51,  60,  66-8  ;  in 

China  and  Tartary,  68 ; 
world-wide,  128,  151,  234 ; 

perhaps  cannibalistic  in  origin, 
152  ;  derived  from  pagan 
Mysteries,  243 
Euhemerism,  10 

Expiation,  ch.  vii ;  meaning  of, 
p.  104  ;  ritual  of,  227 
Faith-healing,  177 


INDEX 


313 


Fall  of  Man,  the,  ch.  ix,  pp.  81, 
141,  143,  175,  254 
Farnell,  Dr.,  quoted,  82  ;z«, 

235,  240,  246 
Fashion,  in  Science,  9 
Fear,  domination  of,  13,  14,  109  ; 
creating  taboos,  14  ;  and  lead¬ 
ing  to  magic  and  ritual,  15  ; 
rooted  in  Ignorance,  275  ;  not 
prominent  in  babyhood,  295 
Feeling  before  thinking,  147 
Fertility  charms,  73 
Fielding,  H.,  quoted,  80 
Fire-drill,  the,  as  sex-symbol,  183 
Firmicus,  Julius,  quoted,  112,  124 
Fish  succeeds  to  Ram  and  Bull 
in  Zodiac,  48 

Forest-schools  of  India,  299 
Frazer,  Dr.  J.  G.,  quoted,  11,  33, 
42,  45.  5B  58.  61,  64,  67,  75, 
79.  S3,  86,  90,  107,  122,  212, 
244 

“  Free  from  Qualities,”  302,  303, 
304 

Freedom  of  the  universe,  270  ; 
freedom  and  peace,  279,  286 

Garcilasso  della  Vega,  quoted, 
58 

Garden  of  Eden,  of  the  Hesperides, 
etc.,  138 

Geddes  and  Thomson  quoted,  87 
Generation  and  Regeneration,  248 
Glover,  Conflict  of  Religions, 
quoted,  200,  220 
Gnostics,  the,  205  ;  pre-Chris¬ 
tian,  206  ;  Gnostic  redeemer, 
206  ;  doctrines,  248 
Gods,  genesis  of,  91,  114  ;  as 
composite  images,  92,  93,  95  ; 
animal-headed,  94  ;  Olym¬ 
pian,  1 14 

God-nature  acquired  by  Man, 
243 

Golden  Age,  legend  of,  ch.  ix ; 

characteristics  of,  143,  144 
“  Goodness,”  dangers  of,  304,  307 
Gorilla  dance,  168 


Gospel  stories,  difficulty  of  belief 
in,  212,  213 

Gubernatis,  De,  quoted,  81 

Harrison,  Jane,  quoted,  11,  61, 
62,  64,  75,  91,  120,  124,  229, 
260 

blasting’s  Encyclopaedia  quoted, 
194 

Hatch,  Dr.,  quoted,  239,  243 
Hercules-legend,  23,  28  ;  H.  as 
Saviour,  49,  129  ;  as  Sun-god, 
50  ;  as  crucified,  190 
Hermes  Trismegistus,  243,  248 
Herodotus  quoted,  125,  182 
Hertha,  earth-goddess,  160 
Hesiod  quoted,  138 
Hewitt,  J.  E.,  quoted,  177,  245 
Hierodouloi,  182 

“  Himself  a  sacrifice  to  Himself,” 
131,  132,  251,  260 
Hippolytus,  Bishop,  quoted,  247 
Holophrase,  the,  an  early  form 
of  language,  229 

Holy  Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem,  28 
Horus  as  Saviour,  129 
“  Host,”  meaning  of  the  word, 

131 

Hudson,  W.  H.,  quoted,  56,  75,  97 
Huitzilopochtli,  eucharist,  67 
Humanity,  future  of,  278 

Identity,  of  god  and  victim,  108, 
13 1,  etc.  ;  perception  of,  300 
Ignorance  or  non-perception,  a 
root  of  the  world,  275 
Illumination,  242,  298 
Immortality,  89,  298 
Im  Thurn,  quoted  on  the  Guiana 
Indians,  96 

Incas,  Rites  and  Laws  of,  67 
Indra  as  Saviour,  129 
Initiation,  rites  of,  120  ;  ordeals, 
123  ;  instruction,  124,  126 ; 

as  actual  marriage,  246 
Inman,  Thomas,  quoted,  10,  81 
Intra-uterine  blessedness,  theory 
of,  138 


314  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Isis  worship,  33,  159,  200; 

popularity  of,  201  ;  mysteries 
of,  241,  244 

Isolated  Self  an  illusion,  273 

Jefferies,  Richard,  quoted,  100 
Jerome,  Saint,  quoted,  159, 
204 

Jesus  Christ,  date  of  birth  fixed, 
a.d.  530,  26;  J.  C.  legend, 
21  ;  coincidences  with  pagan 
legends,  50,  51  ;  supposed 

initiate  in  the  Vedanta,  206  ; 
legendary  or  real  ?  209,  217, 
258 

Jevons,  F.  B.,  quoted,  75,  242 
Justin  Martyr,  25  ;  quoted,  26, 
4^>  51 

Keith,  professor  A.,  quoted,  230 
Khonds,  sacrifices  among  the,  118, 
132 

Kikuyu  tribe,  E.  Africa,  120 
Kings,  early,  S8  ;  become  gods, 
89 

Kingsborough  on  Mexico,  40  n.  ; 
Aztec  holy  supper,  67  ;  doc¬ 
trine  of  Saviour,  130  ;  quoted, 
160 

Knight,  R.  P.,  quoted,  10,  160 
Krishna  legend,  23,  51  ;  Iv.  as 
Saviour,  129,  132 
Kropotkin  quoted,  140,  145 

Lake  of  Beauty,  quoted,  290 
Lamb  or  Ram,  constellation  of, 
34  ;  symbol  of  the  risen 
Saviour,  39,  and  of  Redemp¬ 
tion,  40  ;  washed  in  the 
blood  of,  41  ;  sacrifice  of  in 
Morocco,  46 ;  worship  suc¬ 
ceeds  that  of  the  Bull,  47 
Lang,  Andrew,  quoted,  58,  66, 
72,  89,  108,  125,  133,  169 
Language,  birth  of,  about  simul¬ 
taneous  with  self-conscious¬ 
ness,  229 

Lao-tze,  quoted,  289,  291 


Legends,  rapid  growth  of,  210  ; 
in  the  Christian  Church,  21 1  ; 
in  Babism,  214-216 
Life,  eternal  through  love,  252 
Li ligam,  the,  in  Hindu  Temples, 

182  ;  in  the  Jewish  Temple, 

183  ;  as  the  Christos,  245  ; 
its  real  meaning,  251 

Loisy,  M.,  work  of,  267 
Love,  denied  leads  to  Mammon, 
189  ;  its  divorce  from  Sex, 
199,  249;  Love  and  Ignorance, 
the  two  great  factors  of  Life, 
2  73 

Love  and  charity,  importance  of, 

293 

Lucian  quoted,  157,  169 

McDougall,  W.,  quoted,  225 
MacLennan  quoted,  183 
Maeterlinck  quoted,  140,  148 
Magic,  11  ;  of  contact,  64,  65  ; 
vegetation-magic,  ch.  v  and 
vi ;  sympathetic  m.,  70,  75  ; 
in  snakes,  73  ;  in  words,  156  ; 
a  blend  of  primitive  science 
and  religion,  74,  79,  86,  87  ; 
main  objects  of,  89 
Maitland,  Edward,  quoted,  159 
Man,  an  exile  from  Eden,  226,  227 
Man  a  or  life-force,  62,  64  ;  of 
the  Bull,  84 

Marett,  R.  R.,  quoted,  176 
Marriage,  of  or  with  trees,  80  ; 

m.  customs  generally,  195 
Martius,  von,  quoted,  27,  95 
Mass-man  and  unit-man,  154 
Max  Muller  quoted,  129,  229 
May-pole  dances,  76 
Mead,  G.  R.  S.,  quoted,  248 
Medicine-men  and  magicians, 
power  of,  88  ;  transformed  to 
gods,  92,  93  ;  their  general 
capability,  176 

Meditation,  meaning  of  the  word, 

305 

Mediterranean,  religions,  20  ;  ori¬ 
gins  of  Christianity,  200 


INDEX 


315 


Meilichios,  the  great  Snake,  82 
Meriahs  among  the  Khonds,  118, 

Messiah,  meaning  of,  202 
Metamorphosis  and  Transforma¬ 
tion,  12  7  ;  a  world-wide  doc¬ 
trine,  128 

Milk-diet,  after  initiation,  45, 
127,  253  in  the  Soma 

sacrifice,  177 

Millennium,  often  prophesied,  237 
Mind,  stilling  of,  287,  289,  290 
Mithra-legend,  the,  21,  25,  33  ; 
rites,  41,  42,  44  ;  M.  as  Saviour, 
129  ;  popularity  of,  201,  203, 
204,  209 

Morality,  pagan  superior  to  Chris¬ 
tian,  199  ;  Christian  more 
universal  than  pagan,  201  ; 
parallel  passages,  218  ;  final, 
269  ;  cant  of,  307 
Muller’s  Dorians  quoted,  ri8, 
170 

Murray,  Gilbert,  quoted,  64,  65, 
73,  82,  84,  90,  92,  205 
Mystery-plays  of  a  god-man, 
common  in  antiquity,  212, 
240;  Mysteries  generally,  235, 
238,  ch.  xv  ;  three  methods  of 
teaching,  239  ;  revelations  in, 
240,  241  ;  mystery-societies, 

243  ;  vilified  by  Christians,  246 

Naassene  doctrines,  248 
Nakedness,  in  ancient  rites,  171  ; 

importance  now,  197,  256 
Nanja-s-pots  (Australian),  89 
Nautch-girls,  182 
Neith  as  Virgin-mother,  160 
Neolithic,  culture,  146 ;  freedom 
from  War,  146  ;  origins  of 
religion,  228 

Nicene  Creed,  futility  of,  207 
Non-action  in  action,  291,  292 
Non-differentiation,  final,  269 
Nork,  F.,  quoted,  10,  32,  245 
Notre  Dame,  church  of,  at  Paris, 
33,  161 


Odin,  as  Saviour,  132 
Oil,  anointing  with,  202,  244, 
245 

Omaha  Indians,  124,  261 
Open-air,  importance  of,  293 
Open  secret,  the,  306 
Ordeals,  123 

Orphism,  65  ;  and  Dionysus, 
66  ;  Orphic  tablets,  242 
Osiris-legend,  the,  22  ;  birth  of 
O.,  27  ;  dismemberment  of 
the  god,  53  ;  sacramental 
eating,  67;  O.  as  a  Tree-spirit, 
79  ;  as  Corn-spirit,  83  ;  as 
Saviour,  1 29 

Parthenogenesis,  162 
Passover,  and  the  saving  blood, 
40  ;  ditto  in  Peru,  40 
Patriotism  versus  brotherhood, 
258,  267 

Paul,  St.,  somewhat  confused  in 
mind,  252  ;  his  use  of  mystery- 
language,  253 
Pausanias  quoted,  157 
Payne,  E.  J.,  quoted,  229 
Persian  influences,  203 
Peruvians,  58,  67,  130 
Phallicism,  10,  20,  182,  183, 

2  47 

Phallus,  as  conductor  and  re¬ 
conductor  of  Souls,  248 
Pindar  on  the  Islands  of  the 
Blest,  138 

Plato,  allegory  of  the  Cave,  102  ; 
on  Atlantis,  138 

Prajapati,  the  dismembered  god, 
66,  152 

Precession  of  Equinoxes,  37,  41 
Prescott,  quoted,  28  n.,  107 
Priesthood,  power  of,  201 
Primitive  man,  his  unity  with 
nature  and  the  animals,  74, 
76,  223,  224  ;  his  blend  of 
Science  and  Religion,  78  ;  and 
general  good  sense,  176,  178 
Prometheus,  as  Saviour,  129  ; 
the  crucified,  190 


316  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Property,  influence  of,  147,  272, 
3°7 

Prostitution,  188 
Protestantism,  self-regarding,  254 
Psychological  and  material  evolu¬ 
tion  simultaneous,  271 
Psychology  of  religious  origins 
similar  everywhere,  228 
Purity,  its  meaning,  300 

Quetzalcoatl,  as  Saviour,  130,  132, 
160 

Rain-making,  among  Mandans, 

71  ;  Greeks,  72  ;  Hebrews, 

72  ;  Aztecs,  73  ;  N.A.  In¬ 
dians,  73  ;  by  dancing,  167 

Re-birth  or  Regeneration,  doc¬ 
trine  of,  1 19;  rites  of,  120; 
as  sacred  animal,  122  ;  neces¬ 
sity  of,  1 5 1,  234 
Reclus,  Elisee,  on  La  Grande 
Famille,  74,  75  ;  Elie,  quoted, 
118 

Red  Indian  tribes,  58,  59 
Redemption  of  the  Body,  270 
Reflective  words,  characteristic 
of  Second  Stage,  272 
Reinach,  S.,  quoted,  11,  54,  56, 
57»  59,  M3.  259 

Re-incarnation,  early  belief  in, 
89,  90 

Reitzenstein  quoted,  242,  246, 

248,  252 

Religion,  definitions  of,  57,  259  ; 
evolved  from  magic,  91,  149  ; 
a  story  of  illusion,  101  ;  pa¬ 
rent  of  the  arts,  143  ;  essentials 
of,  in  early  man,  147,  172  ;  a 
tribal  sense,  249,  260 
Religious  Rites,  similar  every¬ 
where,  16,  1 14,  1 19 
Religious  evolution,  three  great 
theories  of,  12,  13  ;  pano¬ 

rama  of,  223 

Rending  of  the  veil,  its  meaning, 
266 

Reservoir  and  water-drop,  288 


Restlessness,  urgency  of  the 
modern  problem,  283  ;  in 
Western  lands,  284,  287  ;  rest 
a  condition  of  good  work,  291 
Resurrection,  celebrated  in  Pagan¬ 
ism,  ch.  ii,  pp.  42,  1 13  ;  not 
mentioned  in  original  St. 
Mark,  213 

Ritual  before  language,  148,  166, 
167,  231 

Rix,  Herbert,  quoted,  216 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  quoted,  11,  43, 

44,  45,  5E  52,  209 
Robertson-Smith,  on  Camel-rite, 
60  ;  on  sacrifice,  66 
Roman  Empire,  the  seedbed  of 
the  new  religion,  208 

Sacsea,  festival  of,  107 
Sacred  stones,  244  ;  upright,  245 
Sacrifice,  its  meaning,  63,  66, 

103  sq.  ;  instances  of,  105  ; 
Biblical,  105  ;  Carthaginian, 
105  ;  Mexican,  106,  107  ; 

Babylonian,  107  ;  essential 
importance  of,  115,  116 ; 

antiquity  of  belief  in,  117 
Sahagun  quoted,  40  n.,  73,  106, 
107  ;  story  of  his  writings,  130 
Salvation,  meaning  of,  236,  242 
Samothracian  Mysteries,  247 
Samson  as  sun-god,  27,  50 
Sarva  Sakshi,  the  universal  Wit¬ 
ness,  302,  303 

Saviour  or  Soter,  90,  206  ;  doc¬ 
trine  of,  world -wide,  129,  202; 
general  belief  in,  a  psycho¬ 
logical  necessity,  155  ;  the 
saviour  Child,  161 
Second  Stage,  characteristics  of,  2 72 
Secularists,  wrath  against  priests, 
12 

Seed  or  seeds,  use  of,  in  the 
Mysteries,  67,  177  n.,  240  n. 
Science,  its  early  connection  with 
magic,  15  ;  its  final  conjunc¬ 
tion  with  Religion,  18,  301  ; 
present-day  science,  97 


INDEX 


317 


Second  birth,  doctrine  of,  see 
Re-birth 

Self-consciousness,  its  place  in 
evolution,  141,  150,  225  ;  the 
origin  of  ritual,  147,  165  ;  a 
danger  to  the  Tribe,  150  ;  a 
sleep  and  a  forgetting,  1 74  ; 
nurse  of  the  practical  Intel¬ 
lect,  174  ;  relation  to  Sex, 
186 ;  to  birth  of  language, 
229  ;  the  false  must  die,  232  ; 
the  true,  274  ;  appearing  at 
age  of  three,  295  ;  hardly 
found  in  animals,  296 
Separation,  an  illusion,  301,  307 
Serpent  and  Scorpion,  28 
Sex,  treatment  of,  by  Chris¬ 
tianity,  ch.  xii  ;  its  connection 
everywhere  with  religion,  183  ; 
as  the  Old  Serpent,  186  ; 
commercialized,  188  ;  primi¬ 
tive  views  on,  247  ;  relation 
to  love,  249 

Sex-rites,  in  the  Jewish  Temple 
and  elsewhere,  ch.  xii,  pp. 
20,  181-3  >*  communal  and 

pandemic,  188  ;  organs  imaged 
in  the  Mysteries,  244 
Sex- taboo,  the,  184-7  >  a  neces_ 
sary  stage,  187  ;  meaning  of, 
in  Christianity,  192 
Shelley  quoted,  97 
Sin,  the  sense  of,  its  origin,  103, 
141  ;  theory  of  sin  and  sacri¬ 
fice,  reasonable,  no  sq.  ; 
natural  evolution  of,  114  ;  its 
redeeming  value,  149  ;  as 
separation,  142,  227,  307 
Siva,  as  the  Sacrifice,  133 
Snakes  in  magic,  73,  82 
Sollas,  W.  J.,  quoted,  230 
Soma-drink,  nature  of,  177 
Son  of  Man,  the,  206,  235 
Spartacus  and  the  slave-revolt, 

138 

Spartan  friendships,  65 
Spencer  and  Gillen  quoted,  61, 
195 


Spirit,  the  Great,  95  ;  of  the 
Hive,  148 

Spirits  or  Sprites,  n 
Spontaneous  evolution  of  rites 
and  creeds,  165,  222 
Spring,  and  the  renewal  of  life, 
70,  1 12 

Star  in  the  East,  24  ;  or  Sirius, 
29 

Sungods,  10,  20,  ch.  ii  ;  and 

Christianity,  21 

Superstitions,  ch.  v  ;  of  ill-luck, 
14,  156,  194 

Suppression  of  instincts,  189  ; 

of  sex,  harmfulness  of,  196 
Sympathetic  magic  for  the  crops, 

75 

Syphilis,  188 

Systems  and  Creeds,  delusive,  12, 
10 1  ;  but  necessary,  103 

Taboos,  created  by  fear,  14,  61, 
62,  94  ;  on  food,  193  ;  on  the 
Sabbath,  194  ;  on  marriage, 
195  ;  of  sex,  185  ;  due  to 
reaction,  185  ;  to  an  instinct 
of  limitation,  193,  195  ;  their 
study  important,  262  ;  final 
freedom  from,  269 
Tacitus  quoted,  47 
Tagore,  Rabindranath,  quoted, 
290 

Taipusam,  festival  in  Ceylon, 
264  ;  meaning  of,  265 
Tammuz,  or  Adonis,  22 
Tat  twam  asi,  299 
Taurobolium,  43 

Taylor,  Richard,  author  of  Devil’s 
Pulpit,  10 

Tennyson  quoted,  295 
Tertullian  quoted,  25,  130 
Testament  of  the  twelve  patriarchs, 
219 

Thanatomania,  14,  177 
Thargelia,  festival  of,  118 
Theocritus  quoted,  65  n.,  71, 
197 

Thera,  inscriptions  at,  170 


318  PAGAN  AND  CHRISTIAN  CREEDS 


Third  Stage,  characteristics  of, 

272  ;  misunderstanding  of, 

273 

Thoreau  quoted,  76 
Three  kings,  the,  30 
Tien  (Chinese)  as  Saviour,  129 
Time,  estimates  of,  in  evolution, 
230,  236 

Tools,  use  of,  characteristic  of 
Second  Stage,  272 
Totems,  ch.  iv  ;  as  tribe-names, 
55  ;  as  divinities,  57,  93, 

224  ;  as  famity  and  national 
crests,  59  ;  the  eating  of, 
59,  61,  132 

Toutain  quoted,  201,  221 
Towards  Democracy  quoted,  306 
Tree  and  Serpent  worships,  80  ; 

their  phallic  meaning,  82 
Trees,  magic  of,  76,  77,  79,  81  ; 

emblems  of  the  female,  Si 
Tribe,  the,  as  a  Spirit,  149 
Twins,  lucky,  87 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  quoted,  80,  86,  224 
Tyndall,  John,  quoted,  285 
Typhon,  28 

Unity,  the  sense  of,  127,  147, 
301  ;  its  denial,  104,  148  ; 

final  evolution  of,  262,  273 
Upanishads,  quoted,  133,  232, 

268,  288,  289,  292,  299,  302, 
3°4,  305  ;  their  origin,  299 

Vegetation-gods,  20 
Venus  Mylitta,  Temple  of,  182 
Vernal  Equinox,  36  ;  and  the 
Paschal  Lamb,  40 
Victim  and  god  identical,  108  ; 
human,  112 

Virgil,  his  4th  Eclogue,  137 


Virgin  Mary,  worship  of,  32  ; 
assumption  of,  32  ;  feast  of 
Purification,  34 

Virgin-birth,  the,  21-24  >  also 
3L  33>  ;  many  legends 

thereon,  159 

Virgin- mothers,  ch.  x ;  black 
ditto,  160 

Virgo,  constellation  of,  30 
Visionary  faculty,  124,  125 

Wakonda,  125,  261 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  quoted,  144 
Walt  Whitman  quoted,  76,  252 
War,  origin  of,  146 ;  words  for, 
absent  in  earliest  Aryan,  229 
Westermarck  quoted,  91,  121,  194 
Wheelbarrow,  chained  to,  286 
Williamson,  The  Great  Law, 
quoted,  241 

Wine,  cult  of  Corn  and  the  Vine, 
52,  66 

Win  wood  Reade  quoted,  168,  177 
Wordsworth  quoted,  166,  173, 

175 

World-religion,  the,  its  evolu¬ 
tion,  16,  131  ;  Christianity 

a  branch  of,  198 
World-wide  similarity  of  rites 
and  creeds,  133  ;  explana¬ 
tions  of,  134-136 
Wrath  of  Early  Fathers  over 
pagan  legends,  25 
Wundt,  Wilhelm,  on  Self-con¬ 
sciousness,  274 

Zeus,  connected  with  the  goat, 
94  ;  with  lightning  and 
thunder,  95 

Zodiac,  ch.  iii ;  Maunder  on  the, 
41  n.  ;  the  twelve  Signs,  241 


THE  END 


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